H&37 


UC-MBLF 


B   3   124    544 


SHORT  STUDIES 


AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 


BY 


THOMAS  WENTWORTH  gIGGINSON. 


ENLARGED  EDITION. 


BOSTON: 
LEE   AND    SHEPARD,  PUBLISHERS. 

NEW  YORK: 

CHARLES   T.   DILLINGHAM. 
1888. 


MS  6  f  3  3 


Reproduced  by 
DUOPAGE  PROCESS 

in  the 
U.S.  of  America 


Micro  Photo  Division 
Bell  &  Howell  Company 
Cleveland  12,  Ohio 


9/3  • 
H62/7 


171 


COPYRIGHT,  1879, 
BY  T.  W.  HIGGINSON. 

COPYRIGHT,  1888, 
BY  T.  W.  HIGGINSON. 


All  right »  rtitrvtd. 


BY  THOMAS  WENTWORTH  HIGGINSON 

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PREFACE. 


THESE  brief  papers  were  originally  published  in 
"The  Literary  World"  (Boston),  and  are  here 
reprinted  in  a  revised  form,  with  some  additions. 

CAMBRIDGE,  MASS.,  Dec.  i,  1879. 


PREFACE  TO  ENLARGED  EDITION. 


IN  the  present  enlarged  edition  two  new  chap 
ters  are  added,  -*•  the  first  of  which  (that  on  Miss 
Alcott)  appeared  originally  in  "Harper's  Bazar," 
and  the  other  (on  Mr.  Whipple)  in  "  The  Atlantic 
Monthly."  They  are  now  reprinted,  with  some 
revision,  by  consent  of  the  publishers  .of  those 
periodicals. 

CAMBRIDGE,  MASS.,  May  i,  1888. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


I.  HAWTHORNE  ?;','';•     -•     r«   .v^  :^«  .  3 

II.  POK    •-",.-"•:*-«/:.'••  i-'*:  :.:iv.:>>;;:i:-r-'-*-S   •  •  12 

III. 'fHOREAU    •       i       4       .    :!*       »;-«V  .  22 

IV.  HOWELLS     .       ^  ?i*v    ?  •       «       •  V*.  .  32 

V,  HELEN  J/CKSON        ,:'.,;.      .»       •  v    •  4° 

VI.  JAMES  .       .       ...       •/••"•  V  •  5* 

VII.  Louis/.  MAY  ALCOTT       ,  :   .•    ;  •:     •  •  61 

VIII.  WHIPPLE  .  68 


SHORT  STUDIES 


or 


AMERICAN    AUTHORS. 


HAWTHORNE.  gf 

I  DO  not  know  when  I  have  been  more  surprised 
than  on  being  asked,  the  other  day,  whether 
Hawthorne  was  not  physically  very  small.  It 
seemed  at  the  moment  utterly  unconceivable  that 
he  should  have  been  any  thing  less  than  the  sombre 
and  commanding  personage  he  was.  Ellery  Chan- 
ning  well  describes  him  as  a 

"  Tall,  compacted  figure,  ably  strung, 
To  urge  the  Indian  chase,  or  point  the  way." 

One  can  imagine  any  amount  of  positive  energy 
—  that  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  for  instance  —  as 
included  within  a  small  physical  frame.  But  the 
self-contained  purpose  of  Hawthorne,  the  large 
resources,  the  waiting  power,  — these  seem  to  the 
imagination  to  imply  an  ample  basis  of  physical 
life;  and  certainly  his  stately  and  noble  port  is 


4        SHORT  STUDIES  OP  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

inseparable,  in  my  memory,  from  these  charac 
teristics. 

Vivid  as  this  impression  is,  I  yet  saw  him  but 
twice,  and  never  spoke  to  him.  I  first  met  him  on 
a  summer  morning,  in  Concord,  as  he  was  walking 
along  the  road  near  the  Old  Manse,  with  his  wife 
by  his  side,  and  a  noble-looking  baby-boy  in  a 
little  wagon  which  the  father  was  pushing.  I  re 
member  him  as  tall,  firm,  and  strong  in  bearing ; 
his  wife  looked  pensive  and  dreamy,  as  she  indeed 
was,  then  and  always  ;  the  child  was  Julian,  then 
known  among  the  neighbors  as  "the  Prince." 
When  I  passed,  Hawthorne  lifted  upon  me  his 
great  gray  eyes,  with  a  look  too  keen  to  seem  in 
different,  too  shy  to  be  sympathetic  —  and  that  was 
all.  But  it  comes  back  to  memory  like  that  one 
glimpse  of  Shelley  which  Browning  describes,  and 
which  he  likens  to  the  day  when  he  found  an 
eagle's  feather. 

Again  I  met  Hawthorne  at  one  of  the  sessions 
of  a  short-lived  literary  club;  and  I  recall  the 
imperturbable  dignity  and  patience  with  which  he 
sat  through  a  vexatious  discussion,  whose  details 
seemed  as  much  dwarfed  by  his  presence  as  if  he 
had  been  a  statue  of  Olympian  Zeus.  After  his 
death  I  had  a  brief  but  intimate  acquaintance  with 
that  rare  person,  Mrs.  Hawthorne ;  and  with  one 


HAWTHORNE.  5 

still  more  finely  organized,  and  born  to  a  destiny 
of  sadness,  —  their  elder  daughter.  I  have  staid 
at  "The  Wayside,"  occupying  a  room  in  the  small 
tower  built  by  Hawthorne,  and  containing  his  lofty 
and  then  deserted  study,  which  still  bore  upon  its 
wall  the  Tennysonian  motto,  "  There  is  no  joy  but 
calm,"  —  this  having  been  inscribed,  however,  not 
by  himself,  but  by  his  son.  It  is  not  my  purpose 
to  dwell  upon  the  facts  of  private  life ;  and  these 
circumstances  are  mentioned  only  because  it  is  well 
to  know  at  what  angle  of  incidence  any  critic  has 
been  touched  by  the  personality  of  a  great  author. 

Perhaps  it  always  appears  to  men,  as  they  grow 
older,  that  there  was  rather  more  of  positive  force 
and  vitality  in  their  own  generation  and  among 
their  immediate  predecessors,  than  among  those 
just  coming  on  the  stage.  This  may  be  the  reason 
why  there  seems  to  me  a  perpetual  sense  of  grasp 
and  vigor  in  Hawthorne's  most  delicate  sketches ; 
while  much  of  the  most  graceful  writing  now  done 
in  America  makes  no  such  impression,  but  either 
seems  like  dainty  confectionery,  or  like  carving 
minute  heads  on  cherry-stones.  In  England  the 
tendency  is  just  now  to  the  opposite  fault,  —  to  a 
distrust  of  all  nice  attention  to  form  in  writing,  as 
being  necessarily  a  weakness.  Hawthorne  happily, 
escaped  both  these  dangerous  alternatives;  and, 


6        SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

indeed,  it  is  hard  to  see  that  his  genius  was  much 
affected  by  his  surroundings,  after,  all.  He  had,  to 
be  sure,  the  conscientious  fidelity  of  Puritanism  in 
his  veins,  a  thing  equally  important  for  literature 
and  for  life :  without  it  he  might  have  lavished 
and  wasted  himself  like  Poe.  He  had  what  Em 
erson  once  described  as  "the  still  living  merit 
of  the  oldest  New-England  families;"1  he_had 
moreover  the  unexhausted  wealth  of  the  Puritan 
traditions,  —  a  wealth  to  which  only  he  and  Whit- 
tier  have  as  yet  done  any  justice.  The  value  of 
the  material  to  be  found  in  contemporary  Ameri 
can  life  he  never  fully  recognized  ;  but  he  was  the 
first  person  to  see  that  we  truly  have,  for  romantic 
purposes,  a  past ;  two  hundred  years  being  really 
quite  enough  to  constitute  antiquity.  This  was  what 
his  "  environment  "  gave  him,  and  this  was  much. 

But,  after  ali,  his  artistic  standard  was  his  own : 
there  was  nobody  except  Irving  to  teach  him  any 
thing  in  that  way ;  and  Irving's  work  lay  rather  on 
the  surface,  and  could  be  no  model  for  Hawthorne's. 
Yet  from  the  time  when  the  latter  began  to  write 
for  "  The  Token,"  at  twenty-three,  his  powers  of 
execution,  as  of  thought,  appear  to  have  been  full- 
grown.  The  quiet  ease  is  there,  the  pellucid  lan 
guage,  the  haunting  quality :  these  gifts  were  born 

1  "The  Dial."  iti..  101. 


HAWTHORNE.  7 

in  him  ;  we  cannot  trace  them  back  to  any  period 
of  formation.  And  when  we  consider  the  degree 
to  which  they  were  developed,  how  utterly  unfilled 
remains  his  peculiar  throne ;  how  powerless  would 
be  the  accumulated  literary  forces  of  London,  for 
instance,  at  this  day,  to  produce  a  single  page  that 
could  possibly  be  taken  for  Hawthorne's;  —  we  see 
that  there  must,  after  all,  be  such  a  thing  as  literary 
art,  and  that  he  must  represent  one  of  the  very 
highest  types  of  artist. 

Through  Hawthorne's  journals  we  trace  the  men 
tal  impulses  by  which  he  first  obtained  his  themes. 
Then  in  his  unfinished  "  Septimius  Felton,"  —  for 
tunately  unfinished  for  this  purpose,  —  we  see  his 
plastic  imagination  at  work  in  shaping  the  romance ; 
we  watch  him  trying  one  mode  of  treatment,  then 
modifying  it  by  another;  always  aiming  at  the 
main  point,  but  sometimes  pausing  to  elaborate  the 
details,  and  at  other  times  dismissing  them  to  be 
worked  out  at  leisure.  There  hangs  before  me,  as 
I  write,  a  photograph  of  one  of  Raphael's  rough 
sketches,  drawn  on  the  back  of  a  letter :  there  is 
a  group  of  heads,  then  another  group  on  a  different 
scale ;  you  follow  the  shifting  mood  of  the  artist's 
mind ;  and  so  it  is  in  reading  "  Septimius  Felton." 
In  all  Hawthorne's  completed  works,  the  pencilling 
is  rubbed  out,  and  every  trace  of  the  preliminary 
labor  nas  disappeared. 


8        SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

One  of  the  most  characteristic  of  Hawthorne's 
literary  methods  is  his  habitual  use  of  guarded 
under-statements  and  veiled  hints.  It  is  not  a  sign 
of  weakness,  but  of  conscious  strength,  when  he  sur 
rounds  each  delineation  with  a  sort  of  penumbra, 
takes  you  into  his  counsels,  offers  hypotheses,  as, 
"  May  it  not  have  been  ?  "  or,  "  Shall  we  not  rather 
say?"  and  sometimes,  like  a  conjurer,  urges  par 
ticularly  upon  you  the  card  he  does  not  intend  you 
*o  accept.  He  seems  not  quite  to  know  whether 
Arthur  Dimmesdale  really  had  a  fiery  scar  on  his 
breast,  or  what  finally  became  of  Miriam  and  her 
lover.  He  will  gladly  share  with  you  any  informa 
tion  he  possesses,  and,  indeed,  has  several  valuable 
hints  to  offer ;  but  that  is  all.  The  result  is,  th?t 
ycu  place  yourself  by  his  side  to  look  with  him  at 
his  characters,  and  gradually  share  with  him  the 
conviction  that  they  must  be  real.  Then,  when  he 
has  you  thus  in  possession,  he  calls  your  attention 
to  the  profound  ethics  involved  in  the  tale,  and  yet 
does  it  so  gently  that  you  never  think  of  the  moral 
as  being  obtrusive. 

All  this  involved .  a  trait  which  was  always  su 
preme  in  him,  —  a  marvellous  self-control.  He 
had  by  nature  that  gift  which  the  musical  com 
poser  Jomelli  went  to  a  teacher  to  seek,  —  "  the  art 
of  not  being  embarrassed  by  his  own  ideas."  Mrs. 


HAWTHORNE.  9 

Hawthorne  told  me  that  her  husband  grappled  alone 
all  winter  with  "  The  Scarlet  Letter,"  and  came  daily 
from  his  study  with  a  knot  in  his  forehead ;  and  yet 
his  self-mastery  was  so  complete  that  every  sentence 
would  seem  to  have  crystallized  in  an  atmosphere 
of  perfect  calm.  We  see  the  value  of  this  element 
in  his  literary  execution,  when  we  turn  from  it  to 
that  of  an  author  so  great  as  Lowell,  for  instance, 
and  see  him  often  entangled  and  weighed  down  by 
his  own  rich  thoughts,  his  style  being  overcrowded 
by  the  very  wealth  it  bears.  .Hawthorne  never 
needed  Italic  letters  to  distribute  his  emphasis, 
never  a  footnote  for  assistance.  There  was  no  con 
ception  so  daring  that  he  shrank  from  attempting 
it;  and  none  that  he  could  not  so  master  as  to 
state  it,  if  he  pleased,  in  terms  of  monosyllables. 

For  all  these  merits  he  paid  one  high  and  inexor 
able  penalty,  —  the  utter  absence  of  all  immediate 
or  dazzling  success.  His  publisher,  Goodrich,  tells 
us,  in  his  "  Reminiscences,"  l  that  Hawthorne  and 
Willis  began  to  write  together  in  "The  Token," 
in  1827,  and  that  the  now-forgotten  Willis  "rose 
rapidly  to  fame,"  while  Hawthorne's  writings  "  did 
not  attract  the  slightest  attention."  The  only  rec 
ognition  of  his  merits  that  I  have  been  able  to 
find  in  the  contemporary  criticism  of  those  early 

*  Vol.  ii.,  p  169. 


10     SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

years   is  in  "The  New-England    Magazine"  f6r 
October,  1834,  where  he  is  classed  approvingly 
with   those  who  were  then   considered  the  emi 
nent  writers  of  the   day,  —  Miss  Sedgwick,  Miss 
Leslie,   Verplanck,   Greenwood,   and    John   Neal. 
"To   them,"   the   critic  says,  "we   may  add    an 
anonymous  author  of  some  of  the   most   delicate 
and   beautiful  prose  ever  published   this  side  of 
the  Atlantic,  —  the  author  of  'The  Gentle  Boy.'  "l 
For  twenty  years  he  continued  to  be,  according 
to   his   own   statement,    "the  obscurest    man   of 
letters    in    America."     Goodrich   testifies   that  it 
was    almost    impossible   to   find   a   publisher   for 
"Twice-Told  Tales"  in  1837,  and  I  can   myself 
remember  how  limited   a  circle   greeted  the  re 
print  in   the   enlarged    edition   of  1841.      When 
Poe,   about    1846,   wrote    patronizingly  of   Haw 
thorne,  he  added,  "  It  was  never  the  fashion,  until 
lately,  to  speak  of  him  in  any  summary  of  our  best 
authors."  2    Whittier  once  told  me  that  when  he 
himself  had  obtained,  with  some  difficulty,  in  1847, 
the  insertion  of  one  of  Hawthorne's  sketches  in 
"The     National    Era,"    the    latter    said    quietly, 
"  There  is  not  much  market  for  my  wares."     It  has 
Always  seemed  to  me  the  greatest  triumph  of  his 

1  New-England  Magazine,  October,  1834,  p.  331. 
»  Poc's  Woiks  (ed.  1853),  Hi.  189. 


HAWTHORNE.  II 

genius,  not  that  he  bore  poverty  without  a  murmur, 
—  for  what  right  has  a  literary  man,  who  can  com 
mand  his  time  and  his  art,  to  sigh  after  the  added 
enjoyments  of  mere  wealth? —  but  that  he  went  on 
doing  work  of  such  a  quality  for  an  audience  so 
small  or  so  indifferent. 

Whether  more  immediate  applause  would  have 
modified  the  result,  it  is  now  impossible  to  say. 
Having  so  much,  why  should  we  ask  for  more  ? 
An  immediate  popularity  might  possibly  have 
added  a  little  more  sunshine  to  his  thought,  a 
few  drops  of  redder  blood  to  his  style;  thus 
averting  the  only  criticism  that  can  ever  be  justly 
made  on  either.  Yet  this  very  privation  has  made 
him  a  nobler  and  tenderer  figure  in  literary  history ; 
and  a  source  of  more  tonic  influence  for  young 
writers,  through  all  corning'  time.  The  popular 
impression  of  Hawthorne  as  a  shy  and  lonely 
man,  gives  but  a  part  of  the  truth.  When  we 
think  of  him  as  reading  "The  Scarlet  Letter"  to 
his  sympathetic  wife,  until  she  pressed  her  hands 
to  her  ears,  and  could  bear  no  more ;  or  when  we 
imagine  him  as  playing  with  his  children  so  gayly 
that  one  of  them  told  me  "there  never  was  such 
a  playmate  in  all  the  world,"  —  we  may  feel  that  he 
had,  after  all,  the  very  best  that  earth  can  give,  and 
all  our  regrets  seem  only  an  impertinence. 


12      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 


POE. 

IT  happens  to  us  rarely  in  our  lives  to  come 
consciously  into  the  presence  of  that  extraor 
dinary  miracle  we  call  genius.  Among  the  many 
literary  persons  whom  I  have  happened  to  meet, 
at  home  or  abroad,  there  are  not  half  a  dozen 
who  have  left  an  irresistible  sense  of  this  rare 
quality;  and,  among  these  few,  Poe  stands  next 
to  Hawthorne  .in  the  vividness  of  personal  im 
pression  he  produced.  I  saw  him  but  once ;  and 
it  was  on  that  celebrated  occasion,  in  1845,  when 
he  startled  Boston  by  substituting  his  boyish  pro 
duction,  "Al  Aaraaf,"  for  the  more  serious  poem 
which  he  was  to  have  delivered  before  the  Ly 
ceum.  There  was  much  curiosity  to  see  him ; 
for  his  prose-writings  had  been  eagerly  read,  at 
least  among  college-students,  and  his  poems  were 
just  beginning  to  excite  still  greater  attention. 
After  a  rather  solid  and  very  partisan  address  by 
Caleb  Gushing,  then  just  returned  from  his  Chi 
nese  embassy,  the  poet  was  introduced.  I  dis- 


POE.  13 

tinctly  recall  his  face,  with  its  ample  forehead, 
brilliant  eyes,  and  narrowness  of  nose  and  chin ; 
an  essentially  ideal  face,  not  noble,  yet  any  thing 
but  coarse ;  with  the  look  of  over-sensitiveness 
which  when  uncontrolled  may  prove  more  debas 
ing  than  coarseness.  It  was  a  face  to  rivet  one's 
attention  in  any  crowd,  yet  a  face  that  no  one 
would  feel  safe  in  loving.  It  is  not  perhaps  strange 
that  I  find  or  fancy  in  the  portrait  of  Charles 
Baudelaire,  Poe's  French  admirer  and  translator, 
some  of  the  traits  that  are  indelibly  associated  with 
that  one  glimpse  of  Poe. 

I  remember  that  when  introduced  he  stood  with 
a  sort  of  shrinking  before  the  audience,  and  then 
began  in  a  thin,  tremulous,  hardly  musical  voice, 
an  apology  for  his  poem,  and  a  deprecation  of  the 
expected  criticism  of  the  Boston  public ;  reiterating 
this  in  a  sort  of  persistent,  querulous  way,  which  did 
not  seem  like  satire,  but  impressed  me  at  the  time 
as  nauseous  flattery.  It  was  not  then  generally 
known,  nor  was  it  established  for  a  long  time  after, 
—  even  when  he  had  himself  asserted  it,  —  that  the 
poet  was  himself  born  in  Boston ;  and  no  one  can 
now  tell,  perhaps,  what  was  the  real  feeling  behind 
the  apparently  sycophantic  attitude.  When,  at 
the  end,  he  abruptly  began  the  recitation  of  his 
rather  perplexing  poem,  everybody  looked  thor- 


14     SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

oughly  mystified.  The  verses  had  long  since  been 
printed  in  his  youthful  volume,  and  had  re-appeared 
within  a  few  days,  if  I  mistake  not,  in  Wiley  & 
Putnam's  edition  of  his  poems;  and  they  pro 
duced  no  very  distinct  impression  on  the  audience 
until  Poe  began  to  read  the  maiden's  song  in  the 
second  part.  Already  his  tones  had  been  soften 
ing  to  a  finer  melody  than  at  first,  and  when  he 
came  to  the  verse,  — 

**  Ligeia !  Ligeia, 

My  beautiful  one  I 
"Whose  harshest  idea 

Will  to  melody  run, 
Oh !  is  it  thy  will  j 

On  the  breezes  to  toss  ? 
Or  capriciously  still 

Like  the  lone  albatross 
Incumbent  on  night 

(As  she  on  the  air) 
To  keep  watch  with  delight 

On  the  harmony  there  ?  " 

his  voice  seemed  attenuated  to  the  finest  golden 
thread ;  the  audience  became  hushed,  and,  as  it 
were,  breathless ;  there  seemed  no  life  in  the  hall 
but  his ;  and  every  syllable  was  accentuated  with 
such  delicacy,  and  sustained  with  such  sweetness, 
as  I  never  heard  equalled  by  other  lips.  When 
the  lyric  ended,  it  was  like  the  ceasing  of  the 


POE.  15 

gypsy's  chant  in  Browning's  "Flight  of  the 
Duchess  ;  "  and  I  remember  nothing  more,  except 
that  in  walking  back  to  Cambridge  my  comrades 
and  I  felt  that  we  had  been  under  the  spell  of  some 
wizard.  Indeed,  I  feel  much  the  same  in  the 
retrospect,  to  this  day. 

The  melody  did  not  belong,  in  this  case,  to  the 
poet's  voice  alone :  it  was  already  in  the  words. 
His  verse,  when  he  was  willing  to  give  it  natural 
utterance,  was  like  that  of  Coleridge  in  rich  sweet 
ness,  and  like  that  was  often  impaired  by  theories 
of  structure  and  systematic  experiments  in  metre. 
Never  in  American  literature,  I  think,  was  such  a 
fountain  of  melody  flung  into  the  air  as  when 
"  Lenore  "  first  appeared  in  "  The  Pioneer ; "  and 
never  did  fountain  so  drop  downward  as  when  Poe 
re-arranged  it  in  its  present  form.  The  irregular 
measure  had  a  beauty  as  original  as  that  of 
^  Christabel ; "  and  the  lines  had  an  ever-varying, 
ever-lyrical  cadence  of  their  own,  until  their  author 
himself  took  them,  and  cramped  them  into  couplets. 
What  a  change  from 

"  Pfftavimus  I 
But  rave  not  thus ! 

And  let  the  solemn  song 
Go  up  to  God  so  mournfully  that  she  may  feel  no  wrong  I " 


:6      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

to  the  amended  version,  portioned  off  in  regular 
lengths,  thus :  — 

" Peccavimus!  but  rave  not  thus!  and  let  a  Sabbath  song 
Go  up  to  God  so  solemnly,  the  dead  may  feel  no  wrong.'7 

Or  worse  yet,  when  he  introduced  that  tedious 
jingle  of  slightly  varied  repetition  which  in  later 
year  reached  its  climax  in  lines  like  these  :  — 

"  Till  the  fair  and  gentle  Eulalie  became  my  blushing  bride, 
Till  the  yellow-haired  young  Eulalie  became  my  smiling 
bride." 

This  trick,  caught  from  Poe,  still  survives  in  our 
literature  ;  made  more  permanent,  perhaps,  by  the 
success  of  his  "  Raven."  This  poem,  which  made 
him  popular,  seems  to  me  far  inferior  to  some  of 
TS  earlier  and  slighter  effusions ;  as  those  exquisite 
verses  "  To  Helen,"  which  are  among  our  American 
classics,  and  have  made 

"The  glory  that  was  Greece, 
And  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome," 

a  permanent  phrase  in  our  language. 

Poe's  place  in  purely  imaginative  prose-writing  is 
as  unquestionable  as  Hawthorne's.  He  even  suc 
ceeded,  which  Hawthorne  did  not,  in  penetrating 
the  artistic  indifference  of  the  French  mind ;  and 
it  was  a  substantial  triumph,  when  we  consider  that 
Baudelaire  put  himself  or  his  friends  to  the  trouble 


POE.  1 7 

of  translating  even  the  prolonged  platitudes  of 
"  Eureka,"  and  the  wearisome  narrative  of  "Arthur 
Gordon  Pym."  Neither  Poe  nor  Hawthorne  has 
ever  been  fully  recognized  in  England ;  and  yet  no 
Englishman  of  our  time,  not  even  De  Quincey,  has 
done  any  prose  imaginative  work  to  be  named  with 
theirs.  But  in  comparing  Poe  with  Hawthorne, 
we  see  that  the  genius  of  the  latter  has  hands  and 
feet  as  well  as  wings,  so  that  all  his  work  is  solid 
as  masonry,  while  Poe's  is  broken  and  disfigured 
by  all  sorts  of  inequalities  and  imitations;  he 
not  disdaining,  for  want  of  true  integrity,  to  dis 
guise  and  falsify,  to  claim  knowledge  that  he  did 
not  possess,  to  invent  quotations  and  references, 
and  even,  as  Griswold  showed,  to  manipulate  and 
exaggerate  puffs  of  himself.  I  remember  the 
interest  with  which  I  looked  through  Tieck,  in  my 
student-days,  to  find  the  "Journey  into  the  Blue 
Distance  "  to  which  Poe  refers  in  the  "  House  of 
Usher;"  and  how  one  of  the  poet's  intimates 
laughed  me  to  scorn  for  troubling  myself  with  any 
of  Poe's  citations,  saying  that  he  hardly  knew  a 
word  of  German. 

But,  making  all  possible  deductions,  how  wonder 
ful  remains  the  power  of  Poe's  imaginative  tales, 
and  how  immense  is  the  ingenuity  of  his  puzzles 
and  disentanglements  1  The  conundrums  of  Wilkie 


l8      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

Collins  never  renew  their  interest  after  the  answef 
is  known ;  but  Foe's  can  be  read  again  and  again. 
It  is  where  spiritual  depths  are  to  be  touched,  that 
he  shows  his  weakness ;  where  he  attempts  it,  as  in 
"William  Wilson,"  it  seems  exceptional;  where 
there  is  the  greatest  display  of  philosophic  form,  he 
is  often  most  trivial,  whereas  Hawthorne  is  often 
profoundest  when  he  has  disarmed  you  by  his  sim 
plicity.  The  truth  is,  that  Poe  lavished  on  things 
comparatively  superficial  those  great  intellectual 
resources  which  Hawthorne  reverently  husbanded 
and  used.  That  there  is  something  behind  even 
genius  to  make  or  mar  it,  this  is  the  lesson  of  the 
two  lives. 

Poe  makes  one  of  his  heroes  define  another  as 
"  that  monstrum  horrendum%  an  unprincipled  man 
of  genius."  It  is  in  the  malice  and  fury  of  his  own 
critical  work  that  his  low  moral  tone  most  betrays 
itself.  No  atmosphere  can  be  more  belittling  than 
that  of  his  "  New  York  Literati :  "  it  is  a  mass  of 
.  vehement  dogmatism  and  petty  personalities  ;  opin 
ions  warped  by  private  feeling,  and  varying  from 
page  to  page.  He  seemed  to  have  absolutely  no 
fixed  standard  of  critical  judgment,  though  it  is  true 
that  there  was  very  little  anywhere  in  America  during 
those  acrimonious  days,  when  the  most  honorable 
head  might  be  covered  with  insult  or  neglect, 


,  POE.  19 

while  any  young  poetess  who  smiled  sweetly  on  Poe 
or  Griswold  or  Willis  might  find  herself  placed 
among  the  Muses.  Poe  complimented  and  rather 
patronized  Hawthorne,  but  found  him  only  "  pecul 
iar  and  not  original ; " ]  saying  of  him,  "  He  has 
not  half  the  material  for  the  exclusiveness  of  litera 
ture  that  he  has  for  its  universality,"  whatever  that 
may  mean ;  and  finally  he  tried  to  make  it  appear 
that  Hawthorne  had  borrowed  from  himself.  He 
returned  again  and  again  to  the  attack  on  Long 
fellow  as  a  wilful  plagiarist,  denouncing  the  trivial 
resemblance  between  his  "  Midnight  Mass  for  the 
Dying  Year  "  and  Tennyson's  "  Death  of  the  Old 
Year,"  as  "  belonging  to  the  most  barbarous  class 
of  literary  piracy." 2  To  make  this  attack  was,  as 
he  boasted,  "to  throttle  the  guilty;"8  and  while 
dealing  thus  ferociously  with  Longfellow,  thus  con 
descendingly  with  Hawthorne,  he  was  claiming  a 
foremost  rank  among  American  authors  for  obscuri 
ties  now  forgotten,  such  as  Mrs.  Amelia  B.  Welby 
and  Estelle  Anne  Lewis.  No  one  ever  did  more 
than  Poe  to  lower  the  tone  of  literary  criticism  in 
this  country  ;  and  the  greater  his  talent,  the  greater 
the  mischief. 
As  a  poet  he  held  for  a  time  the  pbre  earlier 

»  Works,  ed.  1853,  III.,  *».      •  Works,  ed.  1853,  HI.,  325. 
•III.,  300, 


20     SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

occupied  by  Byron,  and  later  by  Swinburne,  as  the 
patron  saint  of  all  wilful  boys  suspected  of  genius, 
and  convicted  at  least  of  its  infirmities.  He  be-* 
longed  to  the  melancholy  class  of  wasted  men,  like 
the  German  Hoffman,  whom  perhaps  of  all  men  of 
genius  he  most  resembled.  No  doubt,  if  we  are 
to  apply  any  standard  of  moral  weight  or  sanity  to 
authors,  —  a  proposal  which  Poe  would  doubtless 
have  ridiculed,  —  it  can  only  be  in  a  very  large 
and  generous  way.  If  a  career  has  only  a  manly 
ring  to  it,  we  can  forgive  many  errors  —  as  in  read 
ing,  for  instance,  the  autobiography  of  Benvenuto 
Cellini,  carrying  always  his  life  in  his  hand  amid  a 
brilliant  and  reckless  society.  But  the  existence  of 
a  poor  Bohemian,  besotted  when  he  has  money, 
angry  and  vindictive  when  the  money  is  spent,  this 
is  a  dismal  tragedy,  for  which  genius  only  makes 
the  footlights  burn  with  more  lustre.  There  is  a 
passage  in  Keats's  letters,  written  from  the  haunts 
of  Burns,  in  which  he  expresses  himself  as  filled  with 
pity  for  the  poet's  life :  "  he  drank  with  blackguards, 
he  was  miserable ;  we  can  see  horribly  clear  in  the 
works  of  such  a  man  his  life,  as  if  we  were  God's 
spies."  Yet  Burns's  sins  and  miseries  left  his  heart 
unspoiled,  and  this  cannot  be  said  of  Poe.  After 
all,  the  austere  virtues  —  the  virtues  of  Emerson 
and  of  Whittier  —  afford  the  best  soil  for  genius. 


POE.  21 

I  like  best  to  think  of  Poe  as  associated  with 
his  betrothed,  Sarah  Helen  Whitman,  whom  I  saw 
sometimes  in  her  later  years.  That  gifted  woman 
had  outlived  her  early  friends  and  loves  and  hopes, 
and  perhaps  her  literary  fame,  such  as  it  was  :  she 
had  certainly  outlived  her  recognized  ties  with  Poe, 
and  all  but  his  memory.  There  she  dwelt  in  her 
little  suite  of  rooms,  bearing  youth  still  in  her  heart 
and  in  her  voice,  and  on  her  hair  also,  and  in  her 
dress.  Her  dimly-lighted  parlor  was  always  decked, 
here  and  there,  with  scarlet ;  and  she  sat,  robed  in 
white,  with  her  back  always  turned  to  the  light,  thus 
throwing  a  discreetly  tinted  shadow  over  her  still 
thoughtful  and  noble  face.  She  seemed  a  person 
embalmed  while  still  alive :  it  was  as  if  she  might 
dwell  forever  there,  prolonging  into  an  indefinite 
future  the  tradition  of  a  poet's  love ;  and  when  we 
remembered  that  she  had  been  Poe's  betrothed,  that 
his  kisses  had  touched  her  lips,  that  she  still  believed 
in  him  and  was  his  defender,  all  criticism  might  well, 
for  her  sake,  be  disarmed,  and  her  saintly  life  atone 
for  his  stormy  and  sad  career. 


22      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 


THOREAU. 

THERE  is  no  fame  more  permanent  than  that 
which  begins  its  real  growth  after  the  death 
of  an  author ;  and  such  i3  the  fame  of  Thoreau. 
Before  his  death  he  had  published  but  tw»  •  books, 
"  A  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimack  Rivers." 
and  "Walden."  Four  more  have  since  been 
printed,  besides  a  volume  of  his  letters  and  two 
biographies.  One  of  these  last  appeared  within 
a  year  or  two  in  England,  where  he  was,  up  to 
the  time  of  his  death,  absolutely  unknown.  Such 
things  are  not  accidental  or  the  result  of  whim,  and 
they  indicate  that  the  literary  fame  of  Thoreau  is 
secure.  Indeed,  it  has  already  survived  two  of  the 
greatest  dangers  that  can  beset  reputation,  —  a  bril 
liant  satirist  for  a  critic,  and  an  injudicious  friend 
for  a  biographer. 

Both  admirer  and  censor,  both  Channing  in  his 
memoir,  and  Lowell  in  his  well-known  criticism, 
have  brought  the  eccentricities  of  Thoreau  into  un 
due  prominence,  and  have  placed  too  little  stress 


THOREAU.  23 

on  the  vigor,  the  good  sense,  the  clear  perceptions, 
of  the  man.  I  have  myself  walked,  talked,  and 
corresponded  with  him,  and  can  testify  that  the 
impression  given  by  both  these  writers  is  far  re 
moved  from  that  ordinarily  made  by  Thoreau  him 
self.  While  tinged  here  and  there,  like  most  New 
England  thinkers  of  his  time,  with  the  manner  of 
Emerson,  he  was  yet,  as  a  companion,  essentially 
original,  whc'esome,  and  enjoyable.  Though  more 
or  less  of  a  humorist,  nursing  his  own  whims,  and 
capable  of  being  tiresome  when  they  came  upper 
most,  he  was  easily  led  away  from  them  to  the  vast 
domains  of  literature  and  nature,  and  then  poured 
forth  endless  streams  of  the  most  interesting  talk. 
He  taxed  the  patience  of  his  companions,  but  not 
more  so,  on  the  whole,  than  is  done  -by  many  other 
eminent  talkers  when  launched  upon  their  favorite 
themes. 

It  is  hard  for  one  who  thus  knew  him  to  be  quite 
patient  with  Lowell  in  what  seems  almost  wanton 
misrepresentation.  Lowell  applies  to  Thoreau  the 
word  "  indolent :  "  but  you  might  as  well  speak  of 
the  indolence  of  a  self-registering  thermometer; 
it  does  not  go  about  noisily,  yet  it  never  knows  an 
idle  moment.  Lowell  says  that  Thoreau  "  looked 
with  utter  contempt  on  the  august  drama  of  des 
tiny,  of  which  his  country  was  the  scene,  and  on 


24      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

which  the  curtain  had  already  risen  ;  "  l  but  was  it 
Thoreau,  or  Lowell,  who  found  a  voice  when  the 
curtain  fell,  after  the  first  act  of  that  drama,  upon 
the  scaffold  of  John  Brown  ?    Lowell  accuses  him 
of  a  "  seclusion  which  keeps  him  in  the  public 
eye,"  and  finds  something  "  delightfully  absurd  "  in 
his    addressing   six   volumes   under   such   circum 
stances  to  the  public,  when  the  fact  is  that  most  of 
these  volumes  were  made  up  by  friends,  after  Tho- 
reau's   death,  from   his   manuscripts,  or  from   his 
stray  papers  in  newspapers  and  magazines.     Lowell 
accepts  throughout  the  popular  misconception  — 
and  has,  indeed,  done  much  to  strengthen  it  —  that 
Thoreau  hater1    civilization,  and   believed  only  in 
the  wilderness ;  whereas  Thoreau  defined  his  own 
position  on  this  point  with  exceeding  clearness,  and 
made  it  essentially  the  same  with  that  of  his  critics. 
"  For  a  permanent  residence  it  seemed  to  me  that 
there  could  be  no  comparison  between  this  [Con 
cord]  and  the  wilderness,  necessary  as  the  latter  is 
for  a  resource  and  a  background,  the  raw  material 
of  all  our  civilization.     The  wilderness  is  simple 
almost    to    barrenness.      The   partially   cultivated 
country  it  is  which  chiefly  has  inspired,  and  will 
continue  to   inspire,  the   strains  of  poets  such  as 
compose  the  mass  of  any  literature."  2 

1  My  Study  Windows,  p.  206.     *  Maine  Woods,  p.  159;  written  in  1846. 


THOREAU.  25 

Seen  in  the  light  of  such  eminently  sensible  re 
marks  as  these,  it  will  by  and  by  be  discovered 
that   Thoreau's    whole   attitude    has    been    need 
lessly  distorted.      Lowell  says   that   "  his   shanty- 
life   was  mere   impossibility,   so    far  as    his    own 
conception  of  it  goes,  as  an  entire  independency 
of  mankind.    The  tub  of  Diogenes  had  a  sounder 
bottom."  !     But  what  a  man  of  straw  is  this  that 
Lowell  is  constructing !      What   is  this  "  shanty- 
life  "  ?    A  young  man  living  in  a  country  village, 
and  having  a  passion  for  the  minute  observation  of 
nature,  and  a  love  for  Greek  and  Oriental  reading, 
takes  it  into  his  head  to  build  himself  a  study,  not 
in  the  garden  or  the  orchard,  but  in  the  woods,  by 
the  side  of  a  lake.     Happening  to  be  poor,  and  to 
live  in  a  time  when  social  experiments  are  in  vogue 
at  Brook  Farm  and  elsewhere,  he  takes  a  whimsical 
satisfaction  in  seeing  how  cheaply  he  can  erect  his 
hut,  and  afterwards  support  himself  by  the  labor  of 
his  hands.     He  is  not  really  banished   from  the 
world,  nor  does  he   seek  or  profess  banishment : 
indeed,  his  house  is  not  two  miles  from  his  mother's 
door  j  and  he  goes  to  the  village  every  day  or  two, 
by  his  own  showing,  to  hear  the  news,2     In  this 
quiet  abode   he   spends  two   years,  varied  by  an 
occasional  excursion  into  the  deeper  wilderness  at  a 

»  My  Study  Windows,  p.  208.  *  Walden.  p.  181. 


26      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

distance.  He  earns  an  honest  living  by  gardening 
and  land-surveying,  makes  more  close  and  delicate 
observations  on  nature  than  any  other  American 
has  ever  made,  and  writes  the  only  book  yet  written 
in  America,  to  my  thinking,  that  bears  an  annual 
perusal.  Can  it  be  really  true  that  this  is  a  life  so 
wasted,  so  unpardonable  ? 

The  artist  LaFarge  built  himself  a  studio  as  bare 
as  Thoreau's  and  almost  as  lonely,  among  the  Para 
dise  Rocks,  near  Newport,  and  used  to  withdraw 
from  the  fashionable  summer  world  to  that  safe 
retreat.  Lowell  himself  has  celebrated  in  immor 
tal  verse  the  self-seclusion  of  Professor  Gould, 
who  would  lock  himself  into  his  Albany  observa 
tory,  and  leave  his  indignant  trustees  to  "admire 
the  keyhole's  contour  grand  "  from  without.  Is 
the  naturalist's  work  so  much  inferior  to  the  art 
ist's,  —  are  the  stars  of  thought  so  much  less  impor 
tant  than  those  of  space,  —  that  LaFarge  and  Gould 
are  to  be  praised  for  their  self-devotion,  and  yet 
Thoreau  is  to  be  held  up  to  all  coming  time  as 
selfish?  For  my  own  part,  with  '•  Walden "  in  my 
hands,  I  wish  that  every  other  author  in  Amer 
ica  might  toy  the  experiment  of  two  years  in  a 
"  shanty." 

Let  me  not  seem  to  do  injustice  to  Lowell,  who 
closes  his  paper  on  Thoreau  with  a  generous  tribute 


THOREAU.  27 

that  does  much  to  redeem  his  earlier  injustice. 
The  truth  is,  that  Thoreau  shared  the  noble  protest 
against  worldliness  of  what  is  called  the  "  transcen 
dental  "  period,  in  America,  and  naturally  shared 
some  of  the  intellectual  extravagances  of  that  seeth 
ing  time ;  but  he  did  not,  like  some  of  his  con 
temporaries,  make  his  whims  an  excuse  for  mere 
selfishness,  and  his  home  life — always  the  best  test 
— was  thoroughly  affectionate  and  faithful.  His 
lifelong  celibacy  was  due,  if  I  have  been  correctly 
informed,  to  an  early  act  of  lofty  self-abnegation 
toward  his  own  brother,  whose  love  had  taken  the 
same  direction  with  his  own.  Certainly  his  per 
sonal  fortitude  amid  the  privations  and  limitations 
of  his  own  career  was  nothing  less  than  heroic. 
There  is  nothing  finer  in  literary  history  than  his 
description,  in  his  unpublished  diary,  of  receiving 
from  his  publisher  the  unsold  copies  —  nearly  the 
whole  edition  —  of 'his  "  Week  on  the  Concord  and 
Merrimack  Rivers,"  and  of  his  carrying  the  melan 
choly  burden  up-stairs  on  his  shoulders  to  his 
study.  "  I  have  now  a  library,"  he  says,  "  of 
nearly  nine  hundred  volumes,  over  seven  hundred 
of  which  I  wrote  myself." l 

It  will  always  be  an  interesting  question,  how  far 

1  By  the  kindness  of  my  friend  H.  G.  O.  Blake,  Esq.,  of  Worcester, 
Mass.,  the  custodian  of  Thoreau's  manuscripts,  I  am  enabled  to  print 
this  entire  passage  at  the  end  of  this  chapter. 


28      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

Thoreau's  peculiar  genius  might  have  been  modi 
fied  or  enriched  by  society  or  travel.  In  his  diary 
he  expresses  gratitude  to  Providence,  or,  as  he 
quaintly  puts  it,  "  to  those  who  have  had  the  hand 
ling  of  me,"  that  his  life  has  been  so  restricted  in 
these  directions,  and  that  he  has  thus  been  com 
pelled  to  extract  its  utmost  nutriment  from  the  soil 
where  he  was  born.  Yet  in  examining  these  diaries, 
even  more  than  in  reading  his  books,  one  is  led  to 
doubt,  after  all,  whether  this  mental  asceticism  was 
best  for  him,  just  as  one  suspects  that  the  vegetable 
diet  in  which  he  exulted  may  possibly  have  short 
ened  his  life.  A  larger  experience  might  have  lib 
eralized  some  of  his  judgments,  and  softened  some 
of  his  verdicts.  He  was  not  as  just  to  men  as  to 
woodchucks ;  and  his  "  simplify,  I  say,  simplify," 
might  well  have  been  relaxed  a  little  for  mankind, 
in  view  of  the  boundless  affluence  of  external 
nature.  The  world  of  art  might  also  have  deeply 
influenced  him,  had  the  way  been  opened  for  its 
closer  study.  Emerson  speaks  of  "  the  raptures  of 
a  citizen  arrived  at  his  first  meadow  ;  "  but  a  deep, 
ascetic  soul  like  Thoreau's  could  hardly  have  failed 
to  be  touched  to  a  far  profounder  emotion  by  the 
first  sight  of  a  cathedral. 

The  impression  that  Thoreau  was  but  a  minor 
Emerson  will  in  time  pass  away,  like  the  early  class- 


THOREAU.  29 

Ification  of  Emerson  as  a  second-hand  Carlyle. 
All  three  were  the  children  of  their  time,  and  had 
its  family  likeness ;  but  Thoreau  had  the  lumen  sic- 
fum,  or  "  dry  light,"  beyond  either  of  the  others ; 
indeed,  beyond  all  men  of  his  day.  His  tempera 
ment  was  like  his  native  air  in  winter,  —  clear,  frosty, 
inexpressibly  pure  and  bracing.  His  power  of  lit 
erary  appreciation  was  something  marvellous,  and 
his  books  might  well  be  read  for  their  quotations, 
like  the  sermons  of  Jeremy  Taylor.  His  daring 
imagination  ventured  on  the  delineation  of  just 
those  objects  in  nature  which  seem  most  defiant  of 
description,  as  smoke,  mist,  haze ;  and  his  three 
poems  on  these  themes  have  an  exquisite  felicity  of 
structure  such  as  nothing  this  side  of  the  Greek 
anthology  can  equal.  Indeed,  the  value  .of  the 
classic  languages  was  never  better  exemplified  than 
in  their  influence  on  his  training.  They  were  real 
"  humanities  "  to  him ;  linking  him  with  the  great 
memories  of  the  race,  and  with  high  intellectual 
standards,  so  that  he  could  never,  like  some  of  his 
imitators,  treat  literary  art  as  a  thing  unmanly  and 
trivial.  His  selection  of  points  in  praising  his 
favorite  books  shows  this  discrimination.  He  loves 
to  speak  of  "  the  elaborate  beauty  and  finish,  and 
the  -lifelong  literary  labors  of  the  ancients  .  .  . 
works  as  refined,  as  solidly  done,  and  as  beautiful 


30      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

almost,  as  the  morning  itself."  *  I  remember  how 
that  fine  old  classical  scholar,  the  late  John  Glen 
King,  of  Salem,  used  to  delight  in  Thoreau  as  being 
"  the  only  man  who  thoroughly  loved  both  nature 
and  Greek." 

Thoreau  died  at  forty-four,  without  having 
achieved  fame  or  fortune.  It  is  common  to  speak 
of  his  life  as  a  failure ;  but  to  me  it  seems,  with  all 
its  drawbacks,  to  have  been  a  great  and  eminent 
success.  Even  testing  it  only  by  the  common  appe 
tite  of  authors  for  immortality,  his  seems  already  a 
sure  and  enviable  place.  Time  is  rapidly  melting 
away  the  dross  from  his  writings,  and  exhibiting 
their  gold.  But  his  standard  was  higher  than  the 
mere  desire  for  fame,  and  he  has  told  it  plainly. 
"There  is  nowhere  recorded,"  he  complains,  "a 
simple  and  irrepressible  satisfaction  with  the  gift  of 
life,  any  memorable  praise  of  God.  ...  If  the  day 
and  the  night  are  such  that  you  greet  them  with  joy, 
and  life  emits  a  fragrance,  like  flowers  and  sweet- 
scented  herbs,  —  is  more  elastic,  starry,  and  immor 
tal,  —  that  is  your  success." 2 

NOTE.  —  The  following  passage  is  now  first  published, 
from  Thoreau's  manuscript  diary,  the  date  being  Oct.  28, 

1853  ••- 

*'  For  a  year  or  two  past,  my  publisher,  Munroe,  has  been 

»  Walden,  p.  »3.  «  Wakka,  pp.  85,  233. 


THOREAU.  31 

writing  from  time  to  time  to  ask  what  disposition  should  be 
made  of  the  copies  of  '  A  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Mer- 
rimack  Rivers,'  still  on  hand,  and  at  last  suggesting  that  he 
had  use  for  the  room  they  occupied  in  his  cellar.    So  I  had 
them  all  sent  to  me  here ;  and  they  have  arrived  to-day  by 
express,  piling  the  man's  wagon,  seven  hundred  and  six 
copies  out  of  an  edition  of  one  thousand,  which  I  bought  of 
Munroe  four  years  ago,  and  have  been  ever  since  paying  for, 
and  have  not  quite  paid  for  yet.    The  wares  are  sent  to  me 
at  last,  and  I  have  an  opportunity  to  examine  my  purchase. 
They,  are  something  more  substantial  than  fame,  as  my 
back  knows,  which  has  borne  them  up  two  flights  of  stairs 
to  a  place  similar  to  that  to  which  they  trace  their  origin. 
Of  the  remaining  two  hundred  ninety  and  odd,  seventy-five 
were  given  away,  the  rest  sold.    I  have  now  a  library  of 
nearly  nine  hundred  volumes,  over  seven  hundred  of  which 
I  wrote  myself.    Is  it  not  well  that  the  author  should  be 
hold  the  fruits  of  his  labor?    My  works  are  piled  up  in  my 
chamber,  half  as  high  as  my  head,  my  opera  omnia.    This 
is  authorship.    These  are  the  work  of  my  brain.    There 
was  just  one  piece  of  good  luck  in  the  venture.    The  un 
bound  were  tied  up  by  the  printer  four  years  ago  in  stout 
paper  wrappers,  and  inscribed,  '  H.  D.  Thoreau's  Concord 
River,  fifty  copies/    So  Munroe  had  only  to  cross  out 
•  River,'  and  write  *  Mass.,'  and  deliver  them  to  the  express 
man  at  once.    I  can  see  now  what  I  write  for,  and  the  result 
of  my  labors.    Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  this  result,  sitting 
beside  the  inert  mass  of  my  works,  I  take  up  my  pen  to 
night  to  record  what  thought  or  experience  I  may  have 
had,  with  as  much  satisfaction  as  ever.    Indeed,  I  believe 
that  this  result  is  more  inspiring  and  better  than  if  a  thou 
sand  had  bought  my  wares.    It  affects  my  privacy  less,  and 
leaves  me  freer." 


32      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 


HOWELLS. 

IT  has  perhaps  been  a  misfortune  to  Mr.  How- 
ells,  that  in  his  position  of  editor  of  "  The  Atlan 
tic  Monthly  "  he  has  inevitably  been  shielded  from 
much  of  that  healthful  discussion  which  is  usually 
needed  for  the  making  of  a  good  author.  Sir 
Arthur  Helps  says,  that,  if  ordinary  criticism  gives 
us  little,  it  is  still  worth  having :  if  it  is  not  marked 
by  common  sense,  it  still  brings  to  us  the  common 
nonsense,  which  is  quite  as  important.  But  the 
conductor  of  the  leading  literary  magazine  of  a 
nation  is  very  apt  to  escape  this  wholesome  ordeal. 
Delicacy  of  course  forbids  his  admitting  any  men 
tion  of  himself,  whether  for  praise  or  blame,  within 
his  own  pages.  Moreover,  his  leading  literary  cop- 
temporaries  are  also  his  contributors ;  and  for  them 
to  discuss  him  freely,  even  elsewhere,  is  like  publicly 
debating  the  character  of  one's  habitual  host.  Com 
pare  the  position,  in  this  respect,  of  Mr.  Howells 
and  of  Mr.  Henry  James.  Their  writings  are  equal 
ly  conspicuous  before  the  community ;  their  merits 


HOWELLS.  33 

are  equally  marked,  and  so  also  are  their  demerits, 
real  or  attributed;  yet  what  a  difference  in  the 
amount  of  criticism  awarded  to  each  !  Each  new 
book  by  Mr.  Howells  is  received  with  an  almost 
monotonous  praise,  as  if  it  had  no  individuality,  no 
salient  points ;  while  each  story  by  Mr.  James  is 
debated  through  and  through  the  newspapers,  as  if 
it  were  a  fresh  Waverley  novel.  I  see  no  reason 
for  this  difference,  except  that  Mr.  Howells  edits 
"The  Atlantic  Monthly,"  and  that  all  other  Ameri 
can  writers  are,  as  it  were,  sitting  at  his  table,  or 
wishing  themselves  there.  He  must  himself  regret 
this  result,  for  he  is  too  essentially  an  artist  not  to 
prize  honest  and  faithful  criticism ;  and  it  is  almost 
needless  to  say  that ,  his  career  as  an  author  has 
been  thoroughly  modest  and  free  from  all  the  arts 
of  self-praise. 

The  peculiar  charm  of  his  prose  style  has  also, 
doubtless,  had  its  effect  in  disarming  criticism.  He 
rarely  fails  to  give  pleasure  by  the  mere  process  of 
writing,  and  this  is  much,  to  begin  with ;  just  as, 
when  we  are  listening  to  conversation,  a  musical 
voice  gratifies  us  almost  more  than  wit  or  wisdom. 
Mr.  Howells  is  without  an  equal  in  America  —  and 
therefore  without  an  equal  among  his  English- 
speaking  contemporaries  —  as  to  some  of  the  most 
attractive  literary  graces.  He  has  no  rival  in  half- 


34     SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

tints,  in  modulations,  in  subtile  phrases  that  touch 
the  edge  of  an  assertion  and  yet  stop  short  of  it. 
He  is  like  a  skater  who  executes  a  hundred  graceful 
curves  within  the  limits  of  a  pool  a  few  yards  square. 
Miss  Austen,  the  novelist,  once  described  her  art  as 
a  little  bit  of  ivory,  on  which  she  produced  small 
effect  after  much  labor.  She  underrated  her  own 
skill,  as  the  comparison  in  some  respects  underrates 
that  of  Howells;  but  his  field  is  —  or  has  until 
lately  seemed  to  be  —  the  little  bit  of  ivory. 

This  is  attributing  to  him  only  what  he  has  been 
careful  to  claim  for  himself.  He  tells  his  methods 
very  frankly,  and  his  first  literary  principle  has  been 
to  look  away  from  great  passions,  and  rather  to  ele 
vate  the  commonplace  by  minute  touches.  Not 
only  does  he  prefer  this,  but  he  does  not  hesitate  to 
tell  us  sometimes,  half  jestingly,  that  it  is  the  only 
thing  to  do.  "As  in  literature  the  true  artist  will 
shun  the  use  even  of  real  events  if  they  are  of  an 
improbable  character,  so  the  sincere  observer  of 
man  will  not  desire  to  look  upon  his  heroic  or  oc 
casional  phases,  but  will  seek  him  in  his  habitual 
moods  of  vacancy  and  tiresomeness." l  He  may 
not  mean  to  lay  this  down  as  a  canon  of  universal 
authority,  but  he  accepts  it  himself;  and  he  accepts 
with  it  the  risk  involved  of  a  too-limited  and  micro- 

»  Their  Wedding  Journey,  p.  86. 


HOWELLS.  35 

scopic  range.  That  he  has  finally  escaped  this 
peril,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  his  method  went,  after 
all,  deeper  than  he  admitted  :  he  was  not  merely  a 
good-natured  observer,  like  Geoffrey  Crayon,  Gen 
tleman,  but  he  had  thoughts  and  purposes,  some 
thing  to  protest  against,  and  something  to  say. 

He  is  often  classed  with  Mr.  James  as  represent 
ing  the  international  school  of  novelists,  yet  in 
reality  they  belong  to  widely  different  subdivisions. 
After  all,  Mr.  James  has  permanently  set  up  his 
easel  in  Europe,  Mr.  Howells  in  America ;  and  the 
latter  has  been,  from  the  beginning,  far  less  anxious 
to  compare  Americans  with  Europeans  than  with 
one  another.  He  is  international  only  if  we  adopt 
Mr.  Emerson's  saying,  that  Europe  stretches  to  the 
Alleghanies.  As  a  native  of  Ohio,  transplanted  to 
Massachusetts,  he  never  can  forego  the  interest  im 
plied  in  this  double  point  of  view.  The  Euro- 
peanized  American,  and,  if  we  may  so  say,  the 
Americanized  American,  are  the  typical  figures  that 
re-appear  in  his  books.  Even  in  "The  Lady  of 
the  Aroostook,"  although  the  voyagers  reach  the 
other  side  at  last,  the  real  contrast  is  found  on 
board  ship ;  and,  although  his  heroine  was  reared 
in  a  New-England  village,  he  cannot  forego  the  sat 
isfaction  of  having  given  her  California  for  a  birth 
place.  Mr.  James  writes  "  international  episodes :  " 


36      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

Mr.  Howells  writes  inter-oceanic  episodes :  his  best 
scenes  imply  ^dialogue  between  the  Atlantic  and 
Pacific  slopes. 

It  was  long  expected  that  there  would  appear 
some  sequel  to  his  "  Chance  Acquaintance."  Bos- 
tonians  especially  wished  to  hear  more  of  Miles 
Arbuton  :  they  said,  "  It  is  impossible  to  leave  a 
man  so  well-dressed  in -a  situation  so  humiliating." 
But  the  sequel  has,  in  reality,  come  again  and 
again  ;  the  same  theme  re-appears  in  "  Out  of  the 
Question,"  in  "  The  Lady  of  the  Aroostook ; "  it 
will  re-appear  while  Mr.  Howells  lives.  He  is  really 
contributing  important  studies  to  the  future  organ 
ization  of  our  society.  How  is  it  to  be  stratified  ? 
How  much  weight  is  to  be  given  to  intellect,  to 
character,  to  wealth,  to  antecedents,  to  inheritance  ? 
Not  only  must  a  republican  nation  meet  and  solve 
these  problems,  but  the  solution  is  more  assisted 
by  the  writers  of  romances  than  by  the  compilers 
of  statistics.  Fourth  of  July  orators  cannot  even 
state  the  problem  :  it  almost  baffles  the  finest  touch. 
As,  in  England,  you  may  read  every  thing  ever  writ 
ten  about  the  Established  Church,  and  yet,  after  all, 
if  you  wish  to  know  what  a  bishop  or  a  curate  is, 
you  must  go  to  Trollope's  novels,  so,  to  trace 
American  "  society  "  in  its  formative  process,  you 
must  go  to  Howells ;  he  alone  shows  you  the  es- 


HOWELLS.  37 

sential  forces  in  action.  He  can  philosophize  well 
enough  on  the  subject,  as  where  he  points  out 
that  hereditary  wealth  in  America  as  yet  represents 
"  nothing  in  the  world,  no  great  culture,  no  political 
influence,  no  civic  aspiration,  not  even  a  pecuniary 
force,  nothing  but  a  social  set,  an  alien  club  life, 
a  tradition  of  dining."  l  But  he  is  not  at  heart  a 
philosopher ;  he  is  a  novelist,  which  is  better,  and 
his  dramatic  situations  recur  again  and  again  to  the 
essential  point. 

It  is  this  constant  purpose  which  gives  dignity 
and  weight  to  his  American  delineations,  even 
where  he  almost  wantonly  checks  himself  and  dis 
appoints  us.  Were  he  merely,  as  some  suppose,  a 
skilful  miniature-painter  of  young  girls  at  watering- 
places,  his  sphere  would  be  very  circumscribed. 
At  limes  he  seems  tempted  to  yield  to  this  limita 
tion  —  during  his  brief  foray  into  the  path  of  short 
dramatic  sketches,  for  instance.  These  sketches 
provoked  comparison  with  innumerable  French  tri 
fles,  which  they  could  not  rival  in  execution.  "  Pri 
vate  Theatricals  "  offers  the  same  thing  on  a  larger 
scale,  and  under  still  greater  disadvantages.  Mrs. 
Farrell  reveals  herself,  at  the  first  glance,  as  a 
coquette  too  shallow  and  vulgar  to  be  really  inter 
esting;  and  she  never  rises  above  that  level  until 

i  Their  Wedding  Journey,  p.  69, 


38      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

she  disappears  from  the  scene,  flinging  her  last  net 
for  the  cow-boy  in  the  pasture.  Her  habit  of  flirt 
ing  is  a  garment  deliberately  put  on,  an  armor  that 
creaks  in  the  wearing.  But  if  you  wish  to  see  how 
a  Frenchman  draws  a  coquette,  read  "  Le  Fianc£ 
de  Mile.  St.  Maur,"  by  Cherbuliez.  The  coquetry 
of  Mme.  d'Arolles  is  always  round  her  as  an  atmos 
phere,  intangible,  all-embracing,  fold  within  fold; 
she  coquets  even  with  a  rudimentary  organ  in 
herself  that  might  be  called  her  conscience ;  and 
then,  besides  this  enveloping  atmosphere,  she  wears 
always  a  thin  garment  of  social  refinement  that 
seems  to  shield  her  even  when  the  last  shred  of 
decorum  is  about  to  drop.  She  is  a  thoroughly 
artistic  creation  ;  in  watching  her  never  so  closely, 
you  cannot  see  the  wires  pulled ;  but  in  "  Private 
Theatricals  "  we  seem  constantly  to  have  notice 
given,  "  Please  observe,  Mrs.  Farrell  is  about  to 
attitudinize  ! " 

The  moral  of  all  this  is,  that  Mr.  Howells  can 
not  be,  if  he  would,  an  artist  per  st,  like  Droz,  in 
reading  whose  brilliant  trifles  we  are  in  a  world 
where  the  execution  is  all,  the  thought  nothing,  and 
the  moral  less  than  nothing.  Nor  does  he  suc 
ceed,  like  Thackeray,  in  making  a  novel  attractive 
without  putting  a  single  agreeable  character  into 
it :  Thackeray  barely  accomplished  this  in  "  Vanity 


HOWELLS.  39 

Fair ; "  Mr.  Howells  was  far  less  successful  in  the 
most  powerful  and  least  satisfactory  of  all  his  books, 
"  A  Foregone  Conclusion."  The  greatest  step  he 
has  ever  taken,  both  in  popularity  and  in  artistic 
success,  has  been  won  by  trusting  himself  to  a  gen 
erous  impulse,  and  painting  in  "  The  Lady  of  the 
Aroostook  "  a  character  worth  the  pains  of  describ 
ing.  The  book  is  not,  to  my  thinking,  free  from 
faults :  the  hero  poses  and  proses,  and  the  drunken 
man  is  so  realistic  as  to  be  out  of  place  and  over 
done  ;  but  the  character  of  the  heroine  seems  to 
me  the  high-water  mark  of  Mr.  Howells.  It  has 
been  feared  that  he  would  always  remain  the  charm 
ing  delineator  of  people  who  were,  after  all,  under 
sized,  —  heroes  and  heroines  like  the  little  figurines 
from  Tanagra,  or  the  admirable  miniature  groups 
of  John  Rogers.  He  has  now  allowed  himself  a 
bolder  sweep  of  arm,  a  more  generous  handling  of 
full-sized  humanity;  and  with  this  work  begins, 
we  may  fain  believe,  the  maturity  of  his  genius. 


NOTE.— 'Since  the  first  edition  of  this  work  appeared,  Mr.  Howells 
has  done  much,  in  the  creation  of  a  character  so  strong  and  original  as 
Silas  Lapham,  to  vindicate  the  prediction  above  implied.  There  is  no 
space  here  to  enter  on  the  discussion  into  which  he  has  latterly  thrown 
himself  with  such  chivalrous  devotion,  as  to  the  true  sphere  of  fiction. 
On  this  point  the  whole  question  seems  simply  to  be,  whether  realism  in 
to  be  regarded  as  a  swing  of  the  pendulum,  or  as  a  guide-post ;  and  here 
I  must  take  isiue  with  Mr.  Howells,  and  hold  to  the  pendulum  theory. 


40      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 


HELEN  JACKSON.     ("  H.  H.") 

M'LLE  DE  MONTPENSIER,  grand-daugh 
ter  of  Henri  Quatre,  is  said  to  have  been 
"  so  famous  in  history  that  her  name  never  appears 
in  it ; "  she  being  known  only  as  "  La  Grande 
Mademoiselle."  This  anonymousness  may  help  the 
fame  of  a  princess,  but  it  must  hurt  that  of  an  au 
thor.  The  initials  "  L.  E.  L.,"  so  familiar  to  some 
of  us  in  childhood,  stood  for  a  fame  soon  forgotten  ; 
and  this  not  so  much  because  her  poetry  was  weak, 
but  because  her  name  was  in  a  manner  nameless. 
However  popular  might  be  the  poems  of  "  H.  H.," 
they  were  still  attached  to  a  rather  vague  and  form 
less  personality  so  long  as  these  initials  only  were 
given ;  to  combine  with  this  the  still  remo'.er  indi 
viduality  of  "  Saxe  Holm,"  was  only  to  deepen  the 
sense  of  vagueness ;  and  if  all  the  novels  of  the 
"  No  Name  "  series,  instead  of  two  of  them,  had 
been  attributed  to  the  same  shadowy  being;  every 
one  would  have  pronounced  the  suggestion  quite 
credible.  To  take  these  various  threads  of  mystery, 


HELEN   JACKSON.  41 

and  weave  them  into  a  substantial  fame,  this  passed 
the  power  of  public  admiration.  At  any  rate,  an 
applause  so  bewildered  could  hardly  be  heard  across 
the  Atlantic ;  and  it  is  almost  exasperating  to  find 
that  in  England,  for  instance,  where  so  many  feeble 
American  reputations  have  been  revived  only  to 
die,  there  are  few  critics  who  know  even  the  name 
of  the  woman  who  has  come  nearest  in  our  day  and 
tongue  to  the  genius  of  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning, 
and  who  has  made  Christina  Rossetti  and  Jean 
Ingelow  appear  but  second-rate  celebrities. 

When  some  one  asked  Emerson  a  few  years 
since  whether  he  did  not  think  "  H.  H."  the  best 
woman-poet  on  this  continent,  he  answered  in  his 
meditative  way,  "  Perhaps  we  might  as  well  pmit 
the  woman ; "  thus  placing  her,  at  least  in  that  mo 
ment's  impulse,  at  the  head  of  all.  He  used  to  cut 
her  poems  from  the  newspapers  as  they  appeared, 
to  carry  them  about  with  Kim,  and  to  read  them 
aloud.  His  especial  favorites  were  the  most  con 
densed  and  the  deepest,  those  having  something  of 
that  kind  of  obscurity  which  Coleridge  pronounced 
to-be  a  compliment  to  the  reader.  His  favorite 
among  them  all  is  or  was  the  sonnet  entitled 


4*      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

"THOUGHT. 

"  O  Messenger,  art  thou  the  king,  or  I  ? 
Thou  clalliest  outside  the  palace-gate 
Till  on  thine  idle  armor  lie  the  late     ' 
And  heavy  dews  :  the  morn's  bright,  scornful  eye 
Reminds  thee ;  then,  in  subtle  mockery, 
Thou  smilest  at  the  window  where  I  wait 
Who  bade  thee  ride  for  life.    In  empty  state 
My  days  go  on,  while  false  hours  prophesy 
Thy  quick  return ;  at  last  in  sad  despair 
I  cease  to  bid  thee,  leave  thee  free  as  air ; 
When  lo  !  thou  stand'st  before  me  glad  and  fleet, 
And  lay'st  undreamed-of  treasures  at  my  feet. 
Ah  I  messenger,  thy  royal  blood  to  buy, 
I  am  too  poor.    Thou  art  the  king,  not  I."1 

The  uncontrollableness  of  thought  by  will  has 
never  been  better  expressed  by  words  than  in  this 
sonnet ;  and  there  are  others  which  utter  emotion 
so  profoundly,  and  yet  with  such  artistic  quiet, 
that  each  brief  poem  seems  the  summary  of  a  life. 
Take  this,  for  instance,  describing  a  ^ove  that,  hav 
ing  once  found  its  shore,  burns  its  ships  behind  it, 
and  absolutely  cuts  off  all  retreat :  — 

"BURNT  SHIPS. 

"  O  Love,  sweet  Love,  who  came  with  rosy  sail 
And  foaming  prow  across  the  misty  sea  I 
O  Love,  brave  Love,  whose  faith  was  full  and  free 
»  Verses  by  H.  H.,  p.  121. 


HELEN  JACKSON.  43 

That  lands  of  sun  and  gold  which  could  not  fail 
Lay  in  the  west,  — that  bloom  no  wintry  gale 
Could  blight,  and  eyes  whose  love  thine  own  should  be, 
Called  thee  with  steadfast  voice  of  prophecy 
To  shores  unknown  1 

"  O  Love,  poor  Love,  avail 
Thee  nothing  now  thy  faiths,  thy  braveries ; 
There  is  no  sun,  no  bloom ;  a  cold  wind  strips  . 

The  bitter  foam  from  off  the  wave  where  dips 
No  more  thy  prow  ;  the  eyes  are  hostile  eyes ; 
The  gold  is  hidden  ;  vain  thy  tears  and  cries  : 
O  Love,  poor  Love,  why  didst  thou  burn  thy  ships  ?  "l 

"  H.  H."  writes  another  class  of  poems,  that,  with 
a  grace  and  wealth  like  Andrew  Marvell's,  carry  us 
into  the  very  life  of  external  nature,  or  link  it  with 
the  heart  of  man.  Emerson's  "Humblebee"  is 
not  a  creation  more  fresh  and  wholesome  than  is 

"MY  STRAWBERRY. 

"  O  marvel,  fruit  of  fruits,  I  pause 
To  reckon  thee.    I  ask  what  cause 
Set  free  so  much  of  red  from  heats 
At  core  of  earth,  and  mixed  such  sweets 
With  sour  and  spice ;  what  was  that  strength 
Which  out  of  darkness,  length  by  length. 
Spun  all  thy  shining  thread  of  vine 
Netting  the  fields  in  bond  as  thine ; 
I  see  thy  tendrils  drink  by  sips 
From  grass  and  clover's  smiling  lips; 


44      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 


I  hear  thy  roots  dig  down 
Tapping  the  meadow's  hidden  cells  ; 
Whole  generations  of  green  things, 
Descended  from  long  lines  of  springs, 
I  see  make  room  for  thee  to  bide 
A  quiet  comrade  by  their  side  ; 
I  see  the  creeping  peoples  go 
Mysterious  journeys  to  and  fro; 
.Treading  to  right  and  left  of  thee, 
Doing  thee  homage  wonderingly. 
I  see  the-  wild  bees  as  they  fare 
Thy  cups  of  honey  drink,  but  spare  ; 
I  mark  thee  bathe  and  bathe  again 
In  sweet  uncalendared  spring  rain. 
I  watch  how  all  May  has  of  sun 
Makes  haste  to  have  thy  ripeness  done, 
While  all  her  nights  let  dews  escape 
To  set  and  cool  thy  perfect  shape. 
Ah,  fruit  of  fruits,  no  more  I  pause 
To  dream  and  seek  thy  hidden  laws  I 
I  stretch  my  hand,  and  dare  to  taste 
In  instant  of  delicious  waste 
On  single  feast,  all  things  that  went 
To  make  the  empire  thou  hasf  spent."  * 

As  the  most  artistic  among  her  verses  I  should 
class  the  "Gondolieds,"  in  which  all  Venice  seems 
reflected  in  the  movement  and  cadence,  while  the 
thought  is  fresh  and  new  and  strong.  Then  there 
are  poems  which  seem  to  hold  all  secrets  of  pas- 

1  Verses,  p.  166. 


HELEN   JACKSON.  45 

sion  trembling  on  the  lips,  yet  forbear  to  tell  them  ; 
and  others,  on  a  larger  scale,  which  have  a  grander 
rhythmical  movement  than  most  of  our  poets  have 
dared  even  to  attempt.  Of  these  the  finest,  to  my 
ear,  is  "  Resurgam  ; "  but  I  remember  that  Char 
lotte  Cushman  preferred  the  "  Funeral  March,"  and 
loved  to  read  it  in  public.  Those  who  heard  her 
can  never  forget  the  solemnity  with  which  she  re- 
•cited  those  stately  cadences,  or  the  grandeur  of  her 
half-glance  over  the  shoulder  as  she  named  first 
among  the  hero's  funeral  attendants 

"  Majestic  Death,  his  freedman,  following." 

"  H.  H."  reaches  the  popular  heart  best  in  a  class 
of  poems  easy  to  comprehend,  thoroughly  human 
in  sympathy ;  poems  of  love,  of  motherhood,  of 
bereavement ;  poems  such  as  are  repeated  and 
preserved  in  many  a  Western  cabin,  cheering  and 
strengthening  many  a  heart.  Other  women  have 
exerted  a  similar  power;  but  in  the  hands  of  a 
writer  like  Alice  Gary,  for  instance,  the  influence 
is  shallow,  though  pure  and  wholesome ;  she 
sounds  no  depths  as  this  later  poet  sounds  them. 
The  highest  type  of  this  class  of  Helen  Jackson's 
verses  may  be  found  in  the  noble  poem  entitled 
"  Spinning,"  which'  begins :  — 


46      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

"  Like  a  blind  spinner  in  the  sun 

I  tread  my  days ; 
I  know  that  all  the  threads  will  run 

Appointed  ways ; 

I  know  each  day  will  bring  its  task, 
And,  being  blind,  no  more  I  ask."1 
% 

No  finer  symbolic  picture  of  human  life  has  ever 
been  framed :  Henry  Vaughan,  had  he  been  a 
woman,  might  have  written  it. 

If,  in  addition  to  her  other  laurels,  Mrs.  Jackson 
is  the  main  author  of  the  "  Saxe  Holm  "  tales,  she 
must  be  credited  not  only  with  some  of  the  very 
best  stories  yet  written  in  America,  —  "  Draxy  Mil 
ler's  Dowry,"  for  instance,  —  but  with  one  of  the 
best-kept  of  all  literary  secrets.  There  has  been 
something  quite  dramatic  in  the  skill  with  which 
the  puzzle  has  been  kept  alive  by  the  appearance 
of  imaginary  claimants  —  if  imaginary  they  be  —  to 
the  honor  of  this  authorship :  now  a  maiden  lady 
in  the  interior  of  New  York  ;  now  a  modest  young 
girl  whose  only  voucher,  Celia  Burleigh,  died  with 
out  revealing  her  name.  I  do  not  know  whether 
any  of  these  claimants  took  the  pains  to  write  out 
whole  stories  in  manuscript,  —  as  an  Irish  pretend 
er  copied  out  whole  chapters  of  Miss  Edgeworth's 
"Castle  Rackrent,"  with  corrections  and  erasures, 

1  Verses,  p.  14. 


HELEN  JACKSON.  47 

—  but  it  is  well  known  that  the  editors  of  "Scrib- 
ner's  Monthly  "  were  approached  by  some  one  who 
professed  to  have  dropped  the  "  Saxe  Holm  "  sto 
ries  in  the  street,  and  demanded  that  they  should 
be  restored  to  him.  He  was  suppressed  by  the 
simple  expedient  of  inviting  him  to  bring  in  some 
specimens  of  his  own  poetry,  that  it  might  be  com 
pared  with  that  of  "  Draxy  Miller ; "  but  the  mod 
est  young  girls  and  the  apocryphal  rural  contribu 
tors  were  less  easily  abolished,  though  time  has 
abated  their  demands.  The  more  Mrs.  Jackson 
denied  the  authorship,  the  more  resolutely  the  pub 
lic  mind  intrenched  itself  in  the  belief  that  she  had 
something  to  do  with  the  stories,  and  that  at  least 
the  verses  therein  contained  were  hers  and  hers 
alone.  There  were  coincidences  of  personal  and 
local  details,  to  connect  her  with  the  veiled  author ; 
and  the  fantastic  title  of  one  tale,  "The  One- 
legged  Dancers,"  had  previously  appeared  in  her 
"  Bits  of  Travel." l  The  final  verdict  seemed  to  be 
that  she  must  have  written  the  books,  with  enough 
of  aid  from  some  friejnd  to  justify  her  persistent 
denial ;  and  ingenious  critics  soon  began  to  see 
internal  traces  of  a  double  authorship,  while  this 
to  other  critics  seemed  altogether  absurd. 
The  publication  of  "  Mercy  Philbrick's  Choice  " 

1  Bits  of  Travel,  p.  65. 


48      SHORT  STUDIES  OP  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

and  "  Hetty's  Strange  History  "  only  revived  the 
same  questions.  The  plots  of  these  books  showed 
the  hand  of  "  Saxe  Holm,"  the  occasional  verses 
that  of  "  H.  H."  Both  novels  brought  a  certain  dis 
appointment  :  they  had  obvious  power,  but  were  too 
painful  to  be  heartily  enjoyed.  After  all,  the  public 
mind  is  rather  repelled  by  a  tragedy,  since  people 
wish  to  be  made  happy.  Great  injustice  has  been 
done  by  many  critics,  I  think,  to  "  Hetty's  Strange 
History."  While  its  extraordinary  power  is  con 
ceded,  it  has  been  called  morbid  and  immoral ;  yet 
it  is  as  stern  a  tale  of  retribution  as  "  Madame 
Bovary"  or  "The  Scarlet  Letter."  We  rarely  find 
in  fiction  any  very  severe  penalties  meted  out  to  a 
wrong  act  done  from  noble  motives.  In  Jean 
Paul's  "  Siebenkas  "  the  husband  feigns  death  in 
order  that  his  wife  may  find  happiness  without  him  : 
he  succeeds  in  his  effort,  and  is  at  last  made  happy 
himself.  In  "  Hetty's  Strange  History  "  the  wife 
effaces  herself  with  precisely  the  same  object,  —  for 
her  husband's  sake :  but  the  effort  fails;  the  hus 
band  is  not  made  happy  by  her  absence,  and  when 
they  are  re-united  the  memory  of  her  deception 
cannot  be  banished,  so  that  after  the  first  bliss  of 
re-union  they  find  that  complete  healing  can  never 
come.  Only  a  deep  nature  could  have  planned, 


'HELEN  JACKSON.  49 

only  a  very  firm  pen  could  have  traced,  the  final 
punishment  of  Hetty's  sin. 

One  of  the  acutest  critics   in   America  said  of 
Saxe  Holm :  "  She  stands  on  the  threshold  of  the 
greatest  literary  triumphs  ever  won  by  an  Amer 
ican  woman."     It  must  be  owned  that  she  still  lin 
gers  there :  we   still   wait  for  any  complete   and 
unquestionable  victory.     Who  knows  but  that  versa 
tile  imagination  may  already  have  sought  some  other 
outlet,  and  she  may  already  be  mystifying  her  pub 
lic  under  some  new  name?    And  of  "  H.  H."  as  a 
poet  it  must  be  said  that  she  seems  of  late  to  be 
half  shrinking  from  her  full  career,  and  to  be  turn 
ing  rather  to  the  path  of  descriptive  prose.    She 
has  always  excelled  in  this:  her  "German  Land 
lady  "  is  unsurpassed  in  its  way,  and  her  new  expe 
riences  of  Western  residence  have  only  added  ful 
ness  and  finish  to  this  part  of  her  literary  work.    No 
one  has  ever  written  of  frontier-life  so  well  as  she, 
in  her  "  Bits  of  Travel  at  Home  ; "  with  such  hearty 
sympathy,  with  a  tone  so  discriminating,  and  with 
such  absence  of  the  merely  coarse  or  melodramatic. 
All  the  California  writers  have  not  secured  for  the 
life  of  that  region  such  a  place  in  the  world  of  art 
as  she  is  giving  to  Colorado ;  all  their  work,  how 
ever  brilliant,  is  encumbered  with  what  is  crude, 
cheap,  exaggerated,  and  therefore  temporary;  hers 


50     SHORT  STUDIES  X)F  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

is  clear  and  firm  and  strong ;  and  those  who  regret 
her  absence  from  her  early  home  can  <yet  rejoice' 
that  she  dwells  amid  scenery  so  magnificent,  and 
in  so  absorbing  a  current  of  human  life. 


NOTE.  — The  death  of  Mrs.  Jackson,  while  yet  in  the  zenith  of  her 
powers,  did  not  occur  until  she  had,  in  the  remarkable  story  of"  Ramona," 
fully  vindicated  that  estimate  placed  upon  her  genius  in  the  preceding 
pages;  nor  is  it  given  to  many  writers  to  pass,  as  she  did,  from  the  depths 
and  heights  of  personal  emotion  to  the  direct  contest  with  a  gigantic 
wrong.  In  this  mission,  moreover,  she  showed  an  executive  faculty  and 
a  power  of  continuous  practical  effort  which  surprised  those  who  knew 
her  best. 


JAMES. 


JAMES. 

WE  are  growing  more  cosmopolitan  and 
varied,  in  these  United  States  of  America ; 
and  our  authors  are  gaining  much,  if  they  are  also 
losing  a  little,  in  respect  to  training.  The  early 
career  of  an  American  author  used  to  be  tolerably 
fixed  and  clear,  if  limited;  a  college  education, 
a  few  months  in  Europe,  a  few  years  in  some, 
profession,  and  then  an  entrance  into  literature 
by  some  side-door.  In  later  times,  the  printing- 
office  has  sometimes  been  substituted  for  the  col 
lege,  and  has  given  a  new  phase  of  literary  char 
acter  distinct  from  the  other,  but  not  less  valuable. 
Mr.  Henry  James  belongs  to  neither  of  the  classes 
thus  indicated :  he  may  be  said  to  have  been 
trained  in  literature  by  literature  itself,  so  early  did 
he  begin  writing,  and  so  incessantly  has  he  writ 
ten.  We  perhaps  miss  in  his  works  something  of 
the  method  which  the  narrower  classical  nurture 
was  supposed  to  give;  and  we  find  few  traces 
of  that  contact  with  the  mass  of  mankind  which 


5  2      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

comes  through  mere  daily  duty  to  the  professional 
man,  the  business  man,  the  journalist.  Mr.  James 
has  kept  a  little  too  good  company  :  we  do  not  find 
in  his  books  such  refreshing  types  of  hearty  and 
robust  manhood  as  Howells,  with  all  his  dainti 
ness,  finds  it  easy  to  depict  in  Colonel  Ellison  and 
the  skipper  of  the  Aroostook.  Then  Mr.  James's 
life  has  been  so  far  transatlantic,  that  one  hardly 
knows  whether  he  would  wish  to  be  accounted  an 
American  writer,  after  all ;  so  that  his  education, 
his  point  of  view,  his  methods,  all  unite  to  place 
him  in  a  class  by  himself.  . 

It  is  pleasant  to  see  a  man  write,  as  he  has 
always  done,  with  abundant  energy,  and  seemingly 
from  the  mere  love  of  writing.  Yet  it  is  im 
possible  to  deny  that  he  has  suffered  from  this 
very  profusion.  Much  of  his  early  work  seems  a 
sort  of  self-training,  gained  at  the  expense  of  his 
readers ;  each  sheet,  each  story,  has  been  hurried 
into  print  before  the  ink  was  dry,  in  order  to  test 
it  on  the  public,  —  a  method  singularly  removed 
from  the  long  and  lonely  maturing  of  Hawthorne. 
"  L'oisivfte  est  nccessairc  aux  t sprits ,  aussi  bifn 
que  le  travail."  Even  the  later  books  of  Mr. 
James,  especially  his  travels  and  his  essays,  show 
something  of  this  defect.  What  a  quarry  of  admira 
ble  suggestions  is,  for  instance,  his  essay  on  Balzac ; 


JAMES.  53 

but  how  prolix  it  is,  what  repetitions,  what  a  want 
of  condensation  and  method  1  The  same  is  true, 
in  a  degree,  of  his  papers  on  George  Sand  and 
Turge'niefi',  while  other  chapters  in  his  "French 
Poets  and  Novelists "  are  scarcely  more  than 
sketches  :  the  paper  on  the  Thedtre  Francis 
hardly  mentions  Sarah  Bernhardt;  and,  indeed, 
that  on  Turge'nieff  says  nothing  of  his  masterpiece, 
"Terres  Vierges."  Through  all  these  essays  he 
shows  delicacy,  epigram,  quickness  of  touch,  pene 
tration  ;  but  he  lacks  symmetry  of  structure,  and 
steadiness  of  hand. 

We  can  trace  in  the  same  book,  also,  some  of 
the  author's  limitations  as  an  imaginative  artist, 
since  in  criticising  others  a  man  shows  what  is 
wanting  in  himself.  When  he  says,  for  instance, 
that  a  monarchical  society  is  "more  available  for 
the  novelist  than  any  other,"  he  shows  that  he  does 
not  quite  appreciate  the  strong  point  of  republi 
canism,  in  that  it  develops  real  individuality  in  pro 
portion  as  it  diminishes  conventional  distinctions. 
The  truth  is,  that  the  modern  novel  has  risen  with 
the  advance  of  democratic  society,  on  the  ruins  of 
feudalism.  Another  defect  is  seen  from  time  to 
time,  when,  in  criticising  some  well-known  book, 
he  misses  its  special  points  of  excellence.  Take, 
for  instance,  his  remarks  on  that  masterly  and 


54      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

repulsive  novel,  "  Madame  Bovary."    To  say  of  the 
author  of  that  work  that  his  "  theory  as  a  novelist, 
briefly   expressed,   is   to   begin  at  the   outside,"1 
scents  almost  whimsically  unjust.     There  is  not  a 
character  in  modern  fiction  developed  more  essen 
tially  from  within  than  that  of  this  heroine  :  all  her 
sins  and  sorrows  are  virtually  predicted  in  the  early 
chapters;   even  Mr.  James   has   to   admit   that   it 
"  could   not    have    been    otherwise " 2    with    her, 
thereby  taking  back  his   own    general    assertion. 
Then  he  says  "  every  thing  in  the  book  is  ugly," 3 
whereas  one  of  its  salient  points  is  the  beauty  of 
the  natural  descriptions  in  which  its  most  painful 
incidents  are  framed.     Finally,  —  and  this   is   the 
most  puzzling  misconception  of  all,  —  Mr.   James 
utterly  fails  to  see  the  bearing  of  one  of  the  pivotal 
points   of  the    narrative,  an    unfortunate    surgical 
operation  performed  by  the  heroine's   husband,  a 
country  doctor  :  he  calls  it  an  "  artistic  bravado,"  * 
and  treats  it  as  a  mere  episode  of  doubtful  value, 
whereas  it  is  absolutely  essential  to  the  working-out 
of  the  plot.     The  situation  is  this  :  Madame  Bovary 
is  being  crushed  to  the  earth  by  living  in  a  social 
vacuum,  with  a  stupid  husband  whom  she  despises, 
and   has   already   deceived.     She   has  just  felt  a 

1  French  Poets  and  Novelists,  p.  256.  •  Ibid.,  p.  261. 

>  Ibid.,  p.  365. 


JAMES.  55 

twinge  of  remorse,  after  receiving  an  affectionate 
letter  from  her  father;  when  suddenly  this  com 
monplace  husband  is  presented  to  her  eyes  in  a 
wholly  new  light,  —  that  of  an  unappreciated  man  of 
genius,  who  has  by  a  single  act  won  a>place  among 
the  great  surgeons  of  his  time.  All  that  is  left 
undepraved  in  her  nature  is  touched  and. roused  by 
this :  she  will  do  any  thing,  bear  any  thing,  for 
such  a  husband.  The  illusion  lasts  but  a  few.  days, 
and  is  pitilessly  torn  away :  the  husband  proves  a 
mere  vulgar,  ignorant  quack,  even  duller,  emptier, 
more  hopeless,  than  she  had  dreamed.  The  re 
action  takes  her  instantly  downward,  and  with  that 
impulse  she  sinks  to  rise  no  more.  The  author 
himself  (Flaubert)  takes  the  pains  to  warn  us  dis 
tinctly  beforehand  of  the  bearing  of  this  inci 
dent  ; l  but  his  precaution  seems  needless,  the  thing 
explains  itself.  It  is  one  of  the  strongest  and 
clearest  passages  in  the  whole  tragedy,  and  it  seems 
as  if  there  must  be  some  defect  of  artistic  sensibility 
in  any  critic  who  misses  his  way  here.  Or  else  — 
which  is  more  probable  —  it  is  another  instance  of 
that  haste  in  literary  workmanship  which  is  one 
of  Mr.  James's  besetting  sins. 


Ellt  Jtmetirait  fort  tmbarrasttt  data  »a  vtlUiti  d<  sacrifice 

VajwtJUcairt  vfftf  A  profiot  lui  /ournir  ***  occasion."  — 
MADAME  BOVARY,  p.  aio. 


$6      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

It  may  be  one  result  of  this  extreme  rapidity  of 
production,  that  Mr.  James  uses  certain  catch-words 
so  often  as  to  furnish  almost  a  shibboleth  for  his 
style ;  such  words,  for  instance,  as  "  brutal,"  "  puer 
ile,"  "  immense."  Another  result  is  seen  in  his  in 
difference  to  careful  local  coloring,  especially  where 
the  scene  is  laid  in  the  United  States.  When  he 
draws  Americans  in  Europe,  he  is  at  home ;  when 
he  brings  Europeans  across  the  Atlantic,  he  never 
seems  quite  sure  of  his  ground,  except  in  Newport, 
which  is  in  some  respects  the  least  American  spot 
on  this  continent.  He  opens  his  "  Europeans  "  by 
exhibiting  horse-cars  in  the  streets  of  Boston  nearly 
ten  years  before  their  introduction,  and  his  whole 
sketch  of  the  Wentworth  family  gives  a  sense  of 
vagueness.  It  is  not  difficult  to  catch  a  few  unmis 
takable  points,  and  portray  a  respectable  elderly 
gentleman  reading  "The  Daily  Advertiser;"  but 
all  beyond  this  is  indefinite,  and,  when  otherwise, 
sometimes  gives  quite  an  incorrect  impression  of 
the  place  and  period  described.  The  family  por 
trayed  has  access  to  "  the  best  society  in  Boston ; " 
yet  the  daughter,  twenty-three  years  old,  has  "  never 
seen  an  artist,"  though  the  picturesque  figure  of 
Allston  had  but  lately  disappeared  from  the  streets, 
at  the  time  mentioned,  and  Cheney,  Staigg,  and 
Eastman  Johnson  might  be  seen  there  any  day,  with 


JAMES.  57 

plenty  of  other  artists  less  known.  The  household 
is  perfectly  amazed  and  overwhelmed  at  the  sight  of 
two  foreigners,  although  there  probably  were  more 
cultivated  Europeans  in  Boston  thirty  years  ago  than 
now,  having  been  drawn  thither  by  the  personal 
celebrity  or  popularity  of  Agassiz,  Ticknor,  Longfel 
low,  Sumner.  and  Dr.  Howe.  The  whole  picture  — 
though  it  is  fair  to  remember  that  the  author  calls  it 
a  sketch  only  —  seems  more  like  a  delineation  of 
American  society  by  Fortunio  or  Alexandre  Dumas 
fits,  than  like  a  portraiture  by  one  to  the  manor  born. 
The  truth  is,  that  Mr.  James's  cosmopolitanism  is, 
after  all,  limited  :  to  be  really  cosmopolitan,  a  man 
must  be  at  home  even  in  his  own  country. 

There  are  no  short  stories  in  our  recent  litera 
ture,  I  think,  which  are  so  good  as  Mr.  James's 
best,  —  "Madame  de  Mauves,"  for  instance,  and 
"The  Madonna  of  the  Future."  Even  these  some 
times  lack  condensation;  but  they  have  a  thor 
oughly  original  grasp,  and  fine  delineations  of  char 
acter.  It  is  a  great  step  downward  from  these  to 
the  somewhat  vulgar  horrors  contained  in  "A 
Romance  of  Certain  Old  Clothes."  The  author 
sometimes  puts  on  a  cynicism  which  does  not  go 
very  deep ;  and  the  young  lovers  of  his  earlier  tales 
had  a  disagreeable  habit  of  swearing  at  young 
ladies,  and  ordering  them  about.  Yet  he  has  kept 


58      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

himself  very  clear  from  the  disagreeable  qualities  of 
the  French  fiction  he  loves.  His  books  never 
actually  leave  a  bad  taste  in  one's  mouth,  as  Char 
lotte  Bronte  said  of  French  novels ;  and,  indeed,  no 
one  has  touched  with  more  delicate  precision  the 
vexed  question  of  morality  in  art.  He  finely  calls 
the  longing  after  a  moral  ideal  "  this  southern  slope 
of  the  mind," l  and  says  of  the  ethical  element, 
"  It  is  in  reality  simply  a  part  -of  the  richness  of 
inspiration :  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  artistic 
process,  and  it  has  every  thing  to  do  with  the  artis 
tic  effect." a  This  is  admirable  ;  and  it  is  a  vindica 
tion  of  this  attribute  when  we  find  that  Mr.  James's 
most  successful  social  stories,  "An  International 
Episode,"  and  "  Daisy  Miller,"  have  been  written 
with  distinct  purpose,  and  convey  lessons.  He 
has  achieved  no  greater  Humph  than  when,  in  this 
last-named  book,  he  succeeds  in  holding  our  sym 
pathy  and  even  affection,  after  all,  for  the  essential 
innocence  and  rectitude  of  the  poor  wayward  girl 
whose  follies  he  has  so  mercilessly  portrayed. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  Mr.  James  has  yet  suc 
ceeded  in  producing  a  satisfactory  novel:  as  a 
clever  woman  has  said,  he  should  employ  some  one 
else  to  write  the  last  few  pages.  However  strong 
the  characterizations,  however  skilful  the  plot,  the 

1  French  Poets  and  Novelists,  p.  114.  *  Ibid,  p.  82. 


JAMES.  59 

reader  is  left  discontented.  If  in  this  respect  he 
seems  behind  Howells,  it  must  be  remembered  that 
James  habitually  deals  with  profounder  emotions, 
and  is  hence  more  liable  to  be  overmastered. 
Longfellow  says  to  himself  in  his  "  Hyperion,"  "  O 
thou  poor  authorling  !  Reach  a  little  deeper  into 
the  human  heart !  Touch  those  strings,  touch 
those  deeper  strings  more  boldly,  or  the  notes  shall 
die  away  like  whispers,  and  no  ear  shall  hear  them 
save  thine  own."  It  is  James  rather  than  Howells 
who  has  heeded  this  counsel.  The  very  disap 
pointment  which  the  world  felt  at  the  close  of 
"  The  American  "  was  in  some  sense  a  tribute  to 
its  power :  the  author  had  called  up  characters  and 
situations  which  could  not  be  cramped,  at  last, 
within  the  conventional  limits  of  a  stage-ending. 
As  a  piece  of  character-drawing,  the  final  irresolu 
tion  of  the  hero  was  simply  perfect :  it  seemed  one 
of  the  cases  where  a  romancer  conjures  up  persons 
who  are  actually  alive,  and  who  insist  on  working 
out  a  destiny  of  their  own,  irrespective  of  his 
wishes.  To  be  thus  conquered  by  one's  own  crea 
tion  might  seem  one  of  those  defeats  that  are 
greater  than  victories ;  yet  it  is  the  business  of  the 
novelist,  after  all,  to  keep  his  visionary  people  well  in 
hand,  and  to  contrive  that  they  shall  have  their  own 
way,  and  yet  not  spoil  his  climax.  In  life,  as  in  "  The 


60     SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

American,"  the  most  complicated  situations  often 
settle  themselves  by  events  unseen,  and  the  most 
promising  tragedies  are  cheated  of  their  crisis.  But 
it  is  not  enough  that  literary  art  should  give  a  true 
transcript  of  nature ;  for  the  work  must  also  com 
ply  with  the  laws  of  art,  and  must  have  a  beginning, 
a  middle,  and  an  end.  "  Un  ouvragc  d'art  doit 
ttre  un  ttrc,  et  non  unc  chose  arbitrairc" l 

1  Pensles  de  J.  Joubert,  p.  289. 


LOUISA    MAY   ALCOTT.  6l 


LOUISA  MAY  ALCOTT. 

THE  career  of  Miss  Alcott  has  not  only  given 
pleasure  to  many  readers,  and  real  benefit 
to  not  a  few,  but  it  has  afforded  an  example  of 
what  may  be  accomplished  by  talent  and  industry 
in  the  way  of  worldly  success,  and  this  of  rather  a 
high  kind.  She  fulfilled  that  which  is  to-day  the 
dearest  dream  of  so  many  young  women.  Earning 
her  living  first  by  domestic  service,  she  soon  passed 
beyond  that;  by  her  own  unaided  pen  she  lifted 
an  exceedingly  impecunious  household  into  lifelong 
independence  and  comfort ;  and  she  nursed,  in 
what  was  for  him  luxury,  the  extreme  old  age  of  a 
father  whose  ideal  and  unworldly  nature  had  made 
it  very  hard  for  him  to  afford  ordinary  comforts  and 
advantages  to  her  youth.  This  she  did  without 
tricks  or  meanness  or  self-puffing ;  without  feeling 
jealousy,  or  inspiring  antagonism.  She  had  the  de 
light  of  sending  sunshine  into  a  myriad  of  scat 
tered  homes,  and  of  teaching  many  young  girls, 
doubtless,  the  way  to  a  more  generous  and  noble 


62      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

life.  She  was  also  always  true  to  her  principles, 
outside  of  literature,  was  never  afraid  of  unpopular 
causes,  or  forgetful  of  needy  friends.  She  earned 
in  all,  doubtless,  more  than  that  hundred  thousand 
dc!!?rs  which  is  popularly  mentioned  in  the  news 
papers  as  the  standard  of  her  pecuniary  success; 
and  how  large  a  part  of  this  she  spent  for  others 
will  never  be  known,  as  she  ordered,  with  judicious 
foresight,  that  her  letters  and  papers  should  be 
burned.  In  view  of  all  this,  she  would  doubtless 
be  selected  by  vast  numbers  of  young  girls  as  their 
ideal  woman;  and  if  the  qualifications  for  such 
an  ideal  are  intellectual  ability  and  a  generous  use 
of  it,  their  selection  would  be  very  good.  It  is  rare 
to  see  a  woman  who,  if  tried  by  her  own  standard 
and  that  of  those  immediately  around  her,  has  led 
a  nobler  or  more  completely  satisfactory  life  than 
Louisa  Alcott. 

But  since  we  ought  never  to  be  satisfied,  either 
with  ourselves  or  with  anybody  else,  and  since  one 
of  the  chief  uses  of  the  study  of  fine  character  is 
to  discover  wherein  it  could  be  yet  finer,  there 
is  always  a  lesson  to  be  drawn  from  the  very  limi 
tations  of  each  career.  The  finest  thought,  ever 
expressed  by  Howells,  I  think,  is  where  he  suggests 
that  success  itself  may  perhaps  seem  very  much  like 
failure,  seen  from  the  inside;  and  there  are  few 


LOUISA    MAY    ALCOTT.  63 

eminent  persons,  probably,  so  sunk  in  conceit,  that 
they  could  not  afford  to  others  certain  warnings  as 
well  as  examples  from  their  own  achievements. 
The  obituaries  usually  miss  such  warnings  ;  indeed, 
they  are  apt  to  turn  expressly  away  from  them,  and 
think  it  a  little  ungenerous  to  draw  them  ;  the  con-  . 
sequence  being,  that  such  obituaries  are  as  valueless 
as  an  inscription  on  a  tombstone,  and,  like  that, 
reduce  all  character  to  a  level  of  commonplace  and 
conventional  virtue.  There  are,  perhaps,  but  two 
points  of  warning,  or  even  of  limitation,  that  need 
to  be  suggested  in  connection  with  Miss  Alcott's 
brilliant  career;  but  each  of  these  is  of  some 
weight. 

First,  it  is  fair  to  ask  why  this  valuable  life  was 
cut  off  so  early,  —  at  fifty-five,  instead  of  eighty- 
eight,  this  last  being  her  father's  term  of  years. 
Was  it  not  because  she  burned  the  candle  too  des 
perately,  while  his  burned  calmly,  and  at  times  even 
feebly?  Of  late  years  she  had  suffered  repeatedly, 
it  is  stated,  from  nervous  prostration  and  other  dis 
orders  coming  from  excess  of  work.  She  never  had 
any  leisure :  she  was  always  overworked.  Grant 
that  this  evil  came  largely  from  those  exacting  de 
mands  of  admirers  and  correspondents,  which  have 
been  more  than  once  pointed  out  by  the  victims, 
and  which  make  it  often  hard  for  a  really  useful  life 


64      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

to  prolong  itself.     But  I  suspect  there  was  another 
reason,  which  seldom  fails  to  tell  upon  successful 
authors.    The  late  James  T.  Fields  once  told  me 
that  he  asked  Charles  Reade,  when  at  the  height 
of  his  fame,  "  Why  do  you  give  us  no  more  of  those 
delightful  shorter  tales  like  '  Peg  Woffington '  and 
*  Christie  Johnstone,'  on  which  your  fame  was  first 
founded?"  —  "Because,"  said  Reade  simply,  "I 
cannot  now  afford  it."     When  he  was  comparatively 
poor  and   unknown,  he  could  write  such   things : 
when   he   had   achieved   fame   and    fortune,   and 
acquired  the  habits  that  come  with  these,  he   no 
longer  had  the  leisure  for  masterpieces.     It  is  the 
same  with  health,  time,  and  life  itself.     The  young 
girl  who  earns  five  dollars  by  her  first   published 
story  has  an  immense   sense   of  wealth :   let   her 
cherish  it,  for  she  will  probably  never  feel  so  rich 
again.     As  a  rule,  if  you  earn  five  hundred  dollars 
a  year,  you  spend  it ;  if  you  earn  five  thousand  dol 
lars  a  year,  your  standard  of  expenditures  expands 
to  match  it;   and,  for  the   most   part,  the   more 
money  one  earns,  the  harder  it  is  to  take  a  vaca 
tion.     This   applies   to   those   who   spend   money 
selfishly,  but  it  applies  with  tenfold  force  to  those 
who  are  generous.     When  the  writer  was  planning, 
in  the  autumn  of  1861,  to  enlist  a  regiment  for  the 
civil  war,  it  occurred  to  him  to  invite  the  celebrated 


LOUISA    MAY   ALCOTT.  65 

John  B.  Gough  to  go  as  chaplain,  since  his  per 
sonal  magnetism  and  eloquence,  although  he  was 
not  a  clergyman,  would  be  felt  through  the  whole 
Union  army.  On  inquiry  it  turned  out  that  Mr. 
Gough  was  absolutely  fettered  by  his  own  large 
earnings  and  profuse  charities.  He  could  easily 
earn  fifty  dollars  or  a  hundred  dollars  a  day  the 
year  round,  by  lecturing;  but  all  this  large  income 
was  mortgaged  in  advance  to  young  men  whom  he 
was  educating,  and  poor  families  whom  he  was 
supporting,  so  that  he  absolutely  could  not  atTord 
to  stop  work  for  a  moment.  Kad  he  been  poorer, 
he  could  have  gone.  So  when  one  reads  of  Miss 
Alcott's  coming  into  the  office  of  "The  Woman's 
Journal,"  and  bringing  a  hundred  dollars  that  she 
had  earned  "  before  breakfast,"  one  is  led  to  ask 
whether  it  would  not  have  been  better  not  to  have 
earned  it,  than  to  give  it  away  so  lavishly  as  to 
have  to  go  to  work  after  breakfast  for  another  hun 
dred  dollars,  instead  of  taking  a  day  off,  and  letting 
the  tired  brain  rest.  It  is  the  last  lesson  ever 
learned  by  writers  and  artists,  to  be  wisely  economi 
cal  of  themselves,  and  to  spare  the  sources  from 
which  prosperity  and  usefulness  too  easily  flow. 

The  other  lesson  goes  deeper.  Miss  Alcott's 
intellectual  work  itself  found  a  limitation  in  its 
grade  by  reason  of  its  ready  abundance.  She  had 


66      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

the  ear  of  her  public :  she  was,  as  was  said  of  her, 
"  a  benefactor  of  households,"  and  perhaps  she  did 
—  it  is  impossible  to  prove  the  contrary  —  the  very 
highest  work  of  which  she  was  capable.  But  it  was 
higher  for  the  conscience  and  the  heart  than  for 
the  intellect.  She  delineated  admirably  the  best 
type  of  plain,  simple,  loving,  affectionate,  intelligent 
American  families;  and  she  has  sure  allies,  and 
will  long  have  them  in  every  circle  of  innocent  and 
unspoiled  girls.  But  all  this  is  scarcely  more  true 
of  her  than  of  Miss  Catherine  Sedgwick  in  the  last 
generation.  And  who  now  reads  —  the  more's  the 
pity  — Miss  Sedgwick's  tales?  The  same  oblivion 
which  overtook  these  is  fast  obscuring  the  popu 
larity,  once  so  great,  of  books  like  "  The  Lamp 
lighter  "  and  "  The  Wide,  Wide  World  ;  "  and  the 
lesson  of  it  all  is,  that  for  permanent  fame,  there 
must  be  a  certain  quality  of  art.  Miss  Alcott  never 
equalled  her  first  successful  work  of  fiction ;  and 
for  the  rest  of  her  life,  as  in  the  case  of  Bret  Harte, 
she  simply  repeated  the  same  few  delineations. 
They  were,  of  course,  more  innocent  and  healthful 
than  Harte's,  but  they  were  as  monotonous.  Chil 
dren,  doubtless,  continued  to  cry  for  them,  but  no 
maturer  reader  —  at  least,  none  familiar  with  litera 
ture  —  cared  to  keep  the  run  of  them.  Her  muse 
was  domestic,  simple,  and  sociable :  the  instinct 


LOUISA    MAY   ALCOTT.  6/ 

of  art  she  never  had.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  her 
as  pondering  a  situation  deeply,  still  less  as  con 
cerning  herself  about  phrase  or  diction.  In  this 
she  was  curiously  unlike  Helen  Jackson,  who  was 
an  artist,  both  by  nature  and  by  habit,  and  who 
was  able  to  write  "  Ramona "  so  rapidly  that  it 
seemed  an  improvisation,  because  she  had  faithfully 
served  an  apprenticeship  in  literary  work.  Morally 
and  socially  Miss  Alcott  may  well  be  a  model  to  all 
young  writers;  but  if  they  are  moved  by  a  pro 
found  passion  for  the  art  of  writing,  —  if  they  wish 
to  reach  an  audience  remoter  than  that  of  to-day, 
—  if  they  wish  to  do  something  that  shall  add  to 
the  lasting  treasure  of  the  great  literature  on  which 
they  have  fed,  —  they  must  look  beyond  her  to 
greater  and  more  permanent  models. 


68      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 


WHXPPLE. 

IT  takes  many  years  after  an  author's  death  to 
award  to  him  a  decisive  allotment  of  fame ;  but 
literary  history  prizes  some  men  as  landmarks,  when 
they  are  not  permanently  recorded  as  lighthouses, 
still  less  as  fixed  stars.  It  is  a  comfort  to  think 
that  many  a  modest  author,  and  indeed  many  a 
mediocre  one,  may  have  an  unquestioned  value  in 
relation  to  his  time,  without  awaiting  the  result  of 
any  appel  a  Fimpartiale  paste  rite,  like  that  which 
Madame  Roland  so  laboriously  prepared.  In  such 
a  case  as  that  of  Edwin  Percy  Whlpple,  this  pre 
liminary  estimate  may  be  made  at  once  and  with 
out  hesitation.  He  was  an  essential  part  of  the 
literary  life  of  Boston,  at  a  time  when  that  city  prob 
ably  supplied  a  larger  proportion  of  the  literary 
life  of  the  nation  than  it  will  ever  again  furnish. 
He  was  unique  among  the  authors  of  that  time  and 
place  in  his  training,  tastes,  and  mental  habit ;  the 
element  that  he  contributed  was  special  and  valu 
able  ;  he  duplicated  nobody,  while  at  the  same  time 


WHIPPLE.  69 

he  .antagonized  nobody,  and  the  controversial  his 
tory  of  that  period  will  find  no  place  for  his  name. 
How  much  more  than  this  can  be  claimed  for  him, 
it  is  too  early  to  determine ;  but  this  is  amply 
enough  to  secure  for  him  the  position  of  an  essen 
tial  and  noticeable  landmark  in  our  American  lit 
erary  history. 

It  is  an  important  feature  in  his  early  career  that 
he  constituted  a  link  between  the  literary  and  com 
mercial  Boston  of  his  earlier  time.  As  Dr.  Holmes 
derived,  at  the  beginning,  a  certain  well-defined 
prestige  from  being  in  literature  the  representative 
of  the  medical  profession  in  America,  —  its  hero, 
its  one  conspicuous  bid  for  liteiary  pre-eminence, 
—  so  Whipple  had,  in  like  manner,  the  mercantile 
community,  a  far  larger  constituency  than  the 
physicians,  behind  him.  He  was  one  of  them 
selves  :  the  Boston  Mercantile  Library  had  been 
his  study,  the  lecture- room  of  the  same  association 
his  first  field  of  prominence,  his  immediate  occupa 
tion  that  of  secretary  of  the  Merchants'  Exchange. 
At  a  time  when  almost  all  New- England  authors 
came  from  Harvard  College  and  the  training  of 
Professor  E.  T.  Channing,  he  stepped  into  the 
arena  with  only  the  merchants'  powerful  guild  be 
hind  him.  These  sponsors  could  justly  claim  that 
he  stood  already  equipped  with  that  clearness  of 


7O      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

thought  and  accuracy  of  statement  which  professors 
of  rhetoric  often  vainly  crave  in  their  pupils ;  and 
it  is  no  wonder  that  he  in  turn  felt  the  value  of  his 
backing,  and  repaid  it  by  courageous  labors  and 
undoubted  successes*    He  was,  indeed,  the  almost 
solitary  instance,  at  that  period,  of  the  self-made 
man  in  American  literature ;  and  to  represent  this 
type,  now  familiar  enough,  was  in  those  days  a  dis 
tinction.     He  had  also  the  merit  of  having  visibly 
modelled  his  style   upon   Macaulay,  then  at  the 
height  of  his  fame,  and  of  having  been  compli 
mented  by  Macaulay  himself ;  and  this,  to  a  commu 
nity  just  beginning  the  process  of  self-emancipation 
from  literary  colonialism,  —  a  process  still  incom 
plete,  but  then   inchoate,  —  was   something.     He 
partook,  too,  of  that  re-action  which  was  just  setting 
in  from  the  rather  grave  and  colorless  literary  style 
of  Dr.  W,  E.  Channing ;  and  Whipple's  crisp  and 
often  pungent  sentences  made  this  re-action  pala- 
talle  to  many  who  could  not  yet  inure  themselves 
to  Emerson.     His  even  temperament  saved  him 
from  extremes,  and  his  amiability  from  rancor ;  so 
that  while  Poe  was  dealing  out  bitter  personalities 
in  "The  Broadway  Journal,"  and   many  younger 
writers  were  following  in  his  track,  Whipple,  like 
Longfellow,  passed  along  undisturbed. 

By  the  mere  exercise  of  these  moral  qualities, 


WHIPPLE.  71 

combined  with  great  keenness  of  insight,  he  doubt 
less  did  a  great  deal  for  the  American  criticism 
of  his  day,  and  must  rank  with  Margaret  Fuller 
Ossoli  and  far  above  Poe  in  the  immediate  value 
of  his  critical  work.  It  is  certainly  saying  a  great 
deal  in  his  praise,  to  admit  that  up  to  a  certain 
time  in  his  life,  there  was  probably  no  other  literary 
man  in  America  who  had  so  thoroughly  made  the 
best  of  himself,  —  extracted  so  thoroughly  from  his 
own  natural  gifts  their  utmost  resources.  His  mem 
ory  was  great,  his  reading  constant,  his  acquaintance 
large,  his  apprehension  ready  and  clear.  He  had 
no  gift  of  extemporaneous  oratory,  but  in  conver 
sation  he  excelled.  What  he  said  or  wrote  was  so 
well  grounded,  so  pithy,  so  candid,  so  neat,  that 
you  felt  for  the  moment  as  if  it  were  the  final 
word :  it  was  only  upon  the  second  reading  that 
you  became  conscious  of  a  certain  limitation. 
After  all,  the  thought  never  went  very  deep ;  the 
attraction  of  style  was  evanescent;  there  was  no 
very  wide  outlook,  no  ideal  atmosphere.  There 
were  wit  and  keenness  and  kindly  frankness,  but  no 
subtile  depths,  no  haunting  quality,  none  of  the 
"seeds  of  things."  These  restrictions  may  have 
been  almost  inseparable  from  a  popular  lecture, 
which  was  the  form  that  he  commonly  chose  ;  but 
they  were  restrictions,  all  the  same.  In  a  time  and 


72      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

place  which  had  produced  Emerson,  this  narrow 
ness  of  range  was  a  defect  almost  fatal. 

Yet  it  did  not  harm  his  immediate  success ;  and 
he  is  said,  in  those  palmy  days  of  lecturing,  to 
have  appeared  a  thousand  times,  first  and  last, 
before  audiences.  But  now  that  his  lectures  —  or 
his  essays  which  might  have  been  lectures -— are 
read  critically,  many  years  later,  we  can  see  that 
the  same  shrinkage  which  has  overtaken  the  work 
of  Bayard  Taylor  and  Dr.  Holland,  his  compee*: 
upon  the  lecture  platform,  has  also  overtaken  his. 
Whether  it  was  that  this  platform,  by  its  direct 
influence,  restricted  these  men,  or  whether  it  was 
that  a  certain  limitation  of  intellect  was  best  fitted 
for  producing  the  article  precisely  available  for  the 
lecture  market,  it  ;s  clear  that  these  three  illustrate 
alike  the  successes  and  the  drawbacks  of  the  lec 
turing  profession.  Now  that  this  vocation  itself 
has  nearly  vanished,  these  comparisons  have  become 
instructive.  The  pursuit  obviously  had  its  perils : 
if  it  sometimes  developed  genius,  it  more  often 
substituted  for  it  mere  talent.  How  insignificant 
seemed  Thoreau,  for  instance,  in  his  Concord 
shanty,  beside  the  least  of  these  three  popular  and 
successful  men  ;  yet  the  influence  of  Thcreau  began 
to  grow  from  the  tiir.e  of  his  death ;  and  of  the 
eight  volumes  of  his  writings  now  possessed  by  the 


WHIPPLE.  73 

public,  six  were  posthumous.  Already  his  fame 
surpasses  that  of  these  others,  as  the  fame  .of 
William  Blake  has  surpassed  that  of  his  almost  for 
gotten  patron,  the  one  eminently  popular  and  suc 
cessful  poet  of  his  time,  William  Hayley.  Thus 
tardily  does  the  flavor  of  original  genius  vindicate 
itself.  "  The  glorious  emperor,  the  mighty  poten 
tate,  has  passed  away,  and  of  all  his  attributes 
there  is  remembered  only  this,  —  that  he  knew  not 
the  worth  of  Firdousi." 

The  book  in  which  Mr.  Whipple  set  his  highest' 
mark  was  his  "  Literature  of  the  Age  of  Elizabeth." 
Here  we  see  him  at  his  best,  and  can  for  that  rea 
son  perceive  these  barriers  most  clearly.  All  that 
industry  can  do,  is  here  done ;  and  there  is  proof 
of  ample  literary  inquiry  as  distinct  from  the  severer 
task  we  call  scholarly  research.  The  characters 
pass  before  us ;  but  not  one  of  them  is,  in  Jonson's. 
phrase,  "  rammed  with  life,"  although  Jonson  him 
self  is  one  of  them.  The  precise  value  of  the  book 
is  to  be  best  seen  by  measuring  it  with  that  of 
Hazlitt  on  the  same  subject.  Hazlitt  is  not  one 
of  the  immortals,  and  yet  it  requires  no  very  careful 
examination  to  show  that  he  gives  fresher,  stronger, 
and  deeper  suggestions,  that  he  teaches  us  far 
more,  than  Whipple.  .Again,  the  style  of  Whipple 
is  more  even,  more  carefully  adjusted,  than  that 


74      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

of  Lowell ;  he  has  fewer  irrelevancies,  fewer  cum 
brous  sentences,  fewer  involved  metaphors ;  and 
yet  Lowell's  "  Conversation  on  the  Old  Dramatists," 
his  first  crude  prose  work,  still  remains  more  fer 
tile  and  suggestive  to  any  cultivated  mind  than  the 
comparatively  neat  and  prosaic  essays  of  Whipple. 
Lowell's  exuberant  wealth  goes  far  to  atone  for  his 
rhetorical  sins;  while  Whipple's  rhetorical  virtues 
do  not  reconcile  us  to  his  lack  of  exuberance. 

There  was  a  good  deal  of  the  publicist  in 
Whipple ;  and  while  he  would  never  have  had  the 
presence,  or  perhaps  the  disposition,  for  public  de 
bate,  he  would  have  shone  as  private  secretary  to  a 
statesman  or  as  clerk  of  some  high  commission.  He 
had  no  vanity ;  and  in  such  a  position  all  his  stores 
of  knowledge  and  his  trained  skill  in  statement 
would  have  been  placed  unselfishly  at  his  country's 
service.  He  enjoyed  better,  perhaps,  what  was  in 
those  days  the  cultivated  decorum  of  English  poli 
tics  than  the  seething  tumult  of  our  own  :  he  read 
the  English  journals,  remembered  past  debates  in 
Hansard,  and  could  at  any  time  have  sent  across 
the  Atlantic  a  good  leading  article  for  "  The  London 
Times."  At  home  his  lot  fell  in  a  period  of  revo 
lution  ;  the  great  anti-slavery  movement  touched 
him,  though  not  at  first  profoundly ;  and,  while 
never  a  recusant,  he  was  never  a  leader.  He  had 


WHIPPLE.  75 

the  literary  temperament;   and  his  willingness   to 
accept  for  life  a  vocation  then  somewhat  subordi 
nate  and  underpaid,  was  nothing  less  than  admir 
able.     In  his  youth,  it  was  so  much  easier  to  be  a 
business  man  than  to  be  an  author,  that  there  was 
really  something  of  chivalry  in  his  thus  siding  with 
the  weaker  party.    Even  now,  when  we  observe  how 
much  more  important  to   any  of  our  universities 
appears  the  man  who  erects  for  it  a  great  building 
than  he  who  honors  it  by  a  great  book,  we  can  see 
how  much  more  seductive  are  the  paths  leading  to 
wealth   than   those  which   point   toward   learning. 
Of  course,  one  may  never  be  rich  enough  to  pay 
for  the  building,  but  so   he   may  never  be  wise 
enough  to  write  the  book :   the  literary  tempera 
ment  is  seen  in  the  decision  made  by  a  young  man 
as  to  which  risk  he  shall  incur.     Whipple  had  no 
hesitation.     Literature  was  his  first  and  last  choice, 
and  he  did  not  swerve  from  it;   and   though  he 
never  attained  to  wealth,  and  perhaps  not  to  an 
immortal  fame,  he  doubtless  never  repented   his 
selection.     He  unquestionably  had  a  happy  life,  at 
least  in  his  prime ;  he  enjoyed  his  profession,  and 
found  a  steady  demand  for  his  work ;   he  had  a 
circle  of  warm  friends,  and  a  delightful  home ;  nor 
was  he  ever  forced  to  that  overwork  found  by  some 
men  so  crushing.     No  pangs  of  envy  ever  saddened 


76      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS, 

or  disturbed  him :  he  liked  better  to  write  or  talk 
of  others  than  of  himself,  and,  like  Leyden  in 
Scott's  description^  "  praised  other  names,  but  left 
his  own  unsung." 

He  was  singularly  free  from  all  borrowed  or 
second-hand  qualities  ;  his  style  was  perhaps  formed 
on  Macaulay,  as  has  been  said,  but  it  is  far  terser 
and  less  measured,  while  1  jss  brilliant ;  and  after 
Macaulay  he  certainly  h^d  no  personal  master. 
Coleridge  and  Landor,  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  came 
and  went,  but  left  no  trace  upon  him.  Lowell,  in 
his  "  Biglow  Papers,"  swerved  sometimes  into  the 
most  flagrant  Carlylese,  but  in  Whipple  there  was 
no  sign  of  any  passing  mannerism.  This,  too,  he 
owed  to  his  happy  equipoise  of  temperament, 
preserving  him  from  many  faults  and  from  some 
merits.  His  latest  writings  were  almost  his  best : 
the  paper  on  George  Eliot,  for  instance,  was  full 
of  discrimination  and  sympathy.  Though  fond  of 
illustration  and  anecdote,  he  was  never  garrulous 
in  talk  or  writing:  never  diluted  or  spun  out  an 
essay,  but  wrote  only  so  long  as  he  had,  or  thought 
he  had,  something  to  say.  He  had  a  great  deal 
of  wit,  and  some  of  his  phrases  will  long  be  cur 
rent,  at  least  in  Boston,  —  "  the  effete  of  society," 
"  the  gentlemen  of  wealth  and  pleasure,"  and  so 
on.  But  the  wit  played,  and  never  wounded,  in 


WHIPPLE.  77 

his  case :  when  he  left  a  club- room,  there  was  no 
crowding  together  of  guests  who  lingered  to  repeat 
his  latest  sarcasms,  each  admirer  thrilling  with 
pleasure  that  the  bitter  arrow  had  penetrated  some 
body  else  than  himself 

Landor's  one  aspiration  was  to  have  a  seat,  how 
ever  humble,  upon  the  small  bench  that  holds  the 
really  original  authors  of  'the  world.  No  man  can. 
tell  for  himself,  we  can  scarcely  tell,  for  another, 
whether  any  such  dream  has  been  fulfilled.  The 
most  gifted  man  can  no  more  see  his  own  genius 
than  his  own  face :  if  he  looks  in  the  glass  for  the 
purpose,  all  other  expression  vanishes,  and  the  face 
that  his  friends  or  foes  see  is  not  there.  It  was 
one  of  the  admirable  traits  of  Whipple's  tempera 
ment  that  he  cared  little  about  the  mirror :  he  did 
his  work  industriously  and  conscientiously,  letting 
it  then  stand  as  it  was  done.  Where  so  large  a 
portion  of  this  work  is  criticism,  such  a  habit  is 
no  slight  merit.  Never  to  write  frivolously,  or  in 
malice,  or  with  any  exultation  of  power,  or  in  any 
half-conscious  spirit  of  retaliation  for  what  your 
victim  and  his  set  have  said  about  you  and  your  set 
at  some  other  time,  —  this  is  a  rare  point  of  superi 
ority.  But  this  was  so  essential  a  part  of  Whipple's 
equipment  that  it  did  not  actually  seem  like  superi 
ority  in  him  :  nobody  ever  imagined  that  he  could 


78      SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

be  any  thing  else  than  dispassionate,  fair-minded, 
and  self-controlled.  In  "The  Atlantic  Monthly," 
where  much  of  his  writing  appeared,  he  contrib 
uted  to  the  first  volume  a  paper  on  "  Intellectual 
Character,"  of  which  the  key-note  is,  that  all  intel 
lectual  success  is  connected  with  personal  manli 
ness.  His  conclusion  is,  "  that  virtue  is  an  aid  to 
insight ;  .  .  .  that  the  austerities  of  conscience  will 
dictate  precision  to  statements,  and  exactness  to 
arguments;  that  the  same  moral  sentiments  and 
moral  power  which  regulate  the  conduct  of  life  will 
illumine  the  path,  and  stimulate  the  purpose,  of 
those  daring  spirits  eager  to  add  to  the  discoveries 
of  truth  and  the  creations  of  art."  And  in  mak 
ing  these  broad  statements  he  was  but  explaining 
the  manner  in  which  thought  and  character  stood 
mutually  related  within  his  own  career. 


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quaint  people  and  customs."  —  Chicago  Advance. 

LIFE   AT   PUGET   SOUND 

With  sketches  of  travel  in  Washington  Territory,  British  Columbia,  Oregon, 
and  California.     By  CAROLINE  C.  LEIGHTON.    i6mo,  cloth,  $1.50. 
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interesting,  and   with  ju*t  that  class  of  facts,  and  sugge.-tions  of  truth,  that 

cannot  fail  to  help  the  Indian  and  the  Chinese."  —  WENUELL  PlUULlPS. 

EUROPEAN    BREEZES 

By  MARGERY  DEANE.     Cloth,  gilt  top,  $1.53.     Being  chapters  of  travel 
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nent,'  by  the  accompliihcd  writer  o(  "  Newport  Breezes." 
"  A  very  bright,  fres'    and  amusing  account,  which  tells  us  about  a  host  of 

things  we  never  heard  ol  before,  and  is  worth  two  ordinary  books  of  European 

travel."  —  Woman' 't  Journal. 

BEATEN  PATHS  ;  or,  A  Woman's  Vacation  in  Europe 

By  ELLA  W.  THOMPSON      i6mo,  cloth.    $t  50. 
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AN    AMERICAN   OIRL   ABROAD 

By  Miss  AUELINE   TRAFTON,  author  of  "His  Inheritance,"  "  Katherine 
Earle,"  etc      i6mo.     Illustrated.     $1.50. 
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delightful."  —  Utica  Observer. 

CURTIS  GUILD'S   TRAVELS 
BRITONS  ANO  MUSCOVITES;  or,  Trait*  of  Two  Empire* 

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OVER  THE  OCEAN;  or,  Sights  and  Scenes  in  Foreign  Lands 
By  CURTIS  GUILD,  editor  of  "  The  Boston  Commercial  Bulletin  '    r>own  8vo. 

Cloth,  $2.50. 

"  The  utmost  that  any  European  tounst  can  hope  to  do  is  to  tell  the  old 
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his  book  in  doing  this."  —  Philadelphia  Bulletin. 
ABROAD  AGAIN;  or,  Fresh  Forays  in  Foreign  Fields 
Uniform  with  "  Over  the  Ocean."      By   the   same    author.      Crown  8vo. 

Cloth,  $2.50. 

"  He  has  given  us  a  life-picture.  Europe  is  done  in  a  style  that  must  serve 
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The  story  of  our  country  in  the  most  reliable  and  interesting  form.  A*  a 
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a  text-book  for  the  study  of  history  it  is  universally  admitted  to  be  the  be*t. 

Young  Folks'  Book  of  American  Explorers 

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such  and  such  things  under  such  and  such  circumstances;  but  it  is  the  genuine 
description  given  by  the  persons  who  experienced  the  things  they  described  in 
letters  written  home."  —  Mcntpdier  Journal. 

The  Nation  in  a  Nutshell 

By  GEORGE  MAKEPKACE  TOWLE,  author  of  "  Heroes  of  History,"  "  Young 
Folks  History  of  England,"  "Young  i  oiks'  History  of  Ireland,"  etc. 
Price  50  cents. 

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h«  relates  the  principal  events  in  American  history,  does  not  detract  from  th* 
charming  interest  of  the  narrative  style."  —  Public  Opinion. 

Young  People's  History^ot  England 

By  GEORGE  MAKEPEACE  TOWLE.    Cloth,  illustrated.     $1.50. 

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style,  and  its  telling  of  the  right  ways."  —  Critic. 

Handbook^  of  English  History 

Based  on  "  Lectures  on  English  History,"  by  the  late  M.  J.  GUEST,  and 
brought  down   to  the  year  1880.     With  a  Supplementary  Chapter  on  the 
English  Literature  of  the   igth  Century.     By  F.  H.  UNUUKWOOD,  LL.L). 
With  Maps,  Chronological  Table,  etc.     $1.50. 
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It  is  succinct,  accurate,  and  delightful."  —  Hartford  Evening  Post. 

Young  Peoples  History  of  Ireland 

By  GEORGK  MAKEPEACR   TOWLK,  author  of  "  Young  People's  History  of 
England,"  "  Young  Folks'  Heroes  of  History,"  etc.     With  an  introduction 
by  JOHN  BOYLE  O'REILLY.    Cloth,  illustrated.    $1.50 
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terminating  at  the  most  interesting  period  of  the  whole;  and  the  reader  lav* 
down  the  book  a  moment  in  enthusiastic  admiration  for  a  people  who  have 
endured  so  much,  and  yet  have  retained  so  many  admirable  characteristics."  — 
AM'.  IVorid. 


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By  GEORGE  MAKEPEACE  TOWLE. 

Handsomely  Illustrated.    Price  per  vol.,  $1.25.    Bets  in  neat  boxen 
VASCO    DA    GAMA: 

HIS    VOYAGES     AND     ADVENTURES. 

"  Da  Gama's  history  In  full  of  striking  adventures,  thrilling  Incident*,  aad 

perilous  situations;  and  Mr.  Towle,  while  not  sacriilclng  historical  accuracy, 

Van  so  skilfully  used  bis  materials,  that  we  have  a  charmingly  romantic  tale  " 

—  Rwral  Jfew-  Yorker. 

P  I  Z  A  R  R  O  : 

HIS  ADVENTURES  AND  CONQUESTS. 
u  No  hero  of  romance  possesses  greater  power  to  charm  the  youthful  reader 
than  the  conqueror  of  Peru.  Not  even  King  Arthur,  or  Thaddeus  of  War. 
eaw,  has  the  power  to  captivate  tbo  imagination  of  the  growing  boy.  Mr. 
Towle  has  handled  his  subject  in  a  glowing  but  truthful  manner;  and  we 
venture  the  assertion,  that,  were  our  children  led  to  read  such  books  as  this, 
the  taste  for  unwholesome,  exciting,  wrong-tcachlng  boys'  books—  dime 
novels  in  books'  clothing—  would  be  greatly  diminished,  to  the  great  gain  of 
mental  force  and  moral  purpose  in  the  rising  generation."—  Chicago  Alliance. 

MAGELLAN; 

OR,  THE    FIRST   VOYAGE   ROUND   THE    WORLD. 
"What  more  of  romantic  and  spirited  adventures  any  bright  boy  coalo 


want  than  Is  to  be  found  In  this  series  of  historical  biography,  it  Is  difficult 
to  imagine.  This  volume  is  written  In  a  most  sprightly  manner;  and  th»» 
life  of  its  hero,  Fernan  Magellan,  with  it«  rapid  stride  from  the  softness  of 
a  putted  youth  to  the  sturdy  courage  and  persevering  fortitude  of  manhood, 
makes  a  tale  of  marvellous  fascination."—  Christian  Union. 

MARCO    POLO: 

HIS  TRAVELS  AND  ADVENTURES. 
"The  story  of  the  adventurous  Venetian,  who  six  hundred  yearn  ago  pen* 
trated  into  India  and  Cathay  and  Thibet  and  Abysoliila,  la  pleasantly  and 
clearly  told  ;  and  nothing  better  can  be  put  Into  the  hands  of  the  school  boy 
or  girl  than  this  scries  of  the  records  of  noted  travellers.  The  heroism  (lift. 
played  by  these  men  was  certainly  as  great  as  that  over  shown  by  conquering 
warrior  ;  mid  it  was  exercised  In  a  far  nobler  cause,  —  tho  catmo  of  knowledge 
and  discovery,  which  has  made  the  nineteenth  century  what  it  is."  <  (frap/iic. 

RALEGH: 

HIS    EXPLOITS    AND    VOYAGES. 

"Thin  belongs  to  tho  '  Young  Folks'  Heroes  of  Hlntory  •  series,  nnd  deals 
with  a  greater  and  more  Interesting  man  than  any  of  its  pnkkootttora,  With 
all  the  black  spots  on  his  fame,  there  are  few  more  brilliant  and  strikintt 
figures  in  Kngltsh  history  than  the  soldier,  sailor,  courtier,  author,  and  ex 
plorer,  Hlr  Walter  Ralegh.  Even  at  thin  distance  of  time,  more  than  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years  after  his  hend  fell  on  the  ncaflbld,  we  cannot  read  hid 
story  without  emotion.  It  is  graphically  written,  and  is  pleaoant  reading, 
not  only  fur  young  folk*,  but  for  old  folks  with  young  hearts."  —  H'OWUN'I 

DRAKE: 

THE    SEA-LION    OF    DEVON. 

Drake  was  the  foremost  sea-captain  of  his  age,  thu  first  English  admiral 
to  send  a  •hip  completely  round  th*  world,  the  hero  of  the  magnificent 
victory  which  the  English  won  over  the  Invincible  Armada.  Ills  career  WM 
•tlrring,  bold,  and  adventurous,  from  early  youth  to  old  age. 


J 


ANE  ANDREWS'S  BOOKS 


ONLY  A  YEAR  AND  WHAT  IT  BROUGHT 

*  fluU*  for  tiirl*       Clvih. 


TEN    BOYS 

WHO  LIVED  ON  THE  ROAD  FROM  LONG  AGO  TO  NOW 

Wita  Jiventy  Illustrations.    Cloth.    80  certs,  net.    By  Mall,  17.00. 

INTRODUCING  THE   STORIES  OF 

I.IK  ARYAN  BOY,   TI1K  I'KKSIAN  BOY,   THE  GREEK  BOY.    THE  ROMAS 

BOY,  THE  SAXON  BOY.  THE  I'A«;E,  THE  ENGLISH  LAD,  THE 

PURITAN  BOY,  THE  YANKEE  BOY,  THE  BOY  OF  1886. 

And  giving  entertaining  and  valuable  information  upon  the  manner* 
and  customs  of  the  different  nations  from  Aryan  age  to  now. 

The  poet  JOHN  G.  WHITTIER  says  of  it:  — 

«'l  have  beeu  reading  the  new  book  by  Jane  Andrews,  'Ten  Boya  who  Lived 
on  the  Road  from  Long  Ago  to  Now/  which  you  have  jual  publiHned,  and  can* 
not  forbear  saying  that  in  all  my  acquaintance  with  juvenile  literature  1  know  of 
nothing  in  many  respects  equal  to  this  remarkable  book,  which  contains  in  iu* 
email  cornpaaa  the  concentrated  knowledge  of  vii.it  libraries.  It  is  the  admirably 
told  story  of  past  centuries  of  the  world's  progress,  and  the  amount  of  study  and 
labor  required  in  its  preparation  seems  almost  appalling  to  contemplate.  One  in 
struck  with  the  peculiar  excellence  of  its  style,  —  clear,  easy,  graceful,  and  pic. 
turesque,  —  which  a  child  cannot  fail  to  comprehend,  and  in  which  '  children  of  a 
larger  growth  '  will  find  an  irresistible  charm.  That  it  will  prove  a  favorite  witii 
old  and  young,  I  have  no  doubt.  It  seems  to  me  that  nothing  could  be  more  en. 
joyable  to  the  boy  of  our  period  than  the  story  of  bow  the  boys  of  ail  ages  lived 
and  acted." 


THE  SEVEN   LITTLE  SISTERS     - 

VHO  LIVE  ON  THE  ROUND    BALL   THAT  FLOATS  IN   THE  AIR. 

Library  Edition,  $1.00.    School  Edition,  60  cent*,  net.    By  mail,  65  cents. 
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their  manners,  customs,  etc.    The  stories  are  charmingly  told. 


Tie  Sera  Little  Sisters  Prove  Their  Sisterliooi 

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GEOGRAPHICAL    PLAYS. 

Comprising  United  States,  Asia,  Africa,  and  South  America, 
Australia  and  the  Islands,  the  Commerce  of  the  World. 

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alter  having  studied  portions  of  it  from  day  to  day. 


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WARNER  $1.50 

"  What  can  be  said  that  is  more  eloquent  praise  than  that  Charles  Dudley 
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